Agents: Choices and Chances
by Stormhawk
Summary: Agents, Exiles, Love, Betrayal...what else do you need?
1. Truth and Retaliation

**Title:** Choices and Chances

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer: **

Matrix = Wachowski Brothers and Warner Brothers

ATS = Me and Lord Mordy

Stef, Stevie, Darth, Cray, Niq, and rest of Exy crew = Me

[I think this fic has the largest cast of any written yet, I'm going to do a count later.]

Always blame the locals...

**Chapter Word Count: **1902

**Summary:** Just read the damn thing...you know you want to...

**Notes:** This is going chapter-by-chapter cause the ending isn't finished yet...

**Please read and Review.**

Ryder, the captain of the Exodus, walked up the second flight of stairs toward Darth's room. To his amazement, he heard a female voice coming from the programmer's room.

"You're doing it wrong," the female voice said and it took Ryder a moment to realize that it belong to that agent. She sounded different to when he'd heard her talk before, softer, more relaxed...human, but nonetheless in a tone that flaunted superiority. The fact that an agent was even capable of sounding that convincingly human disturbed him to no end.

"I'm not going to get the hang of this," Darth muttered.

"Shh...go slower...just relax and it'll come. I'm patient. And you were the one who boasted about not having trouble with things like this."

Ryder stopped himself from knocking on the door, and just listened. There was something completely wrong in the mansion.

"Help me would you?"

There was a heavy sigh, "you see it now? You're getting it."

"I'm learning..."

"It will be easier next time, the quicker you learn, the better it is." There was a pause, "does your captain want to come in now or is he going to stand outside your door the rest of the day?"

"Ryder?" Darth asked. There was a squeak as Darth got up and opened the door.

Ryder managed not to look sheepish as the programmer opened the door. "How long were you standing there?"

"I wasn't..."

"He was standing there for at least a minute," Mimosa said as she dropped her head backward over her chair and looked at him. "You aren't exactly a feather-weight captain and the stairs creak." Ryder gave her a strange look, her jacket was on the back of the chair and she wasn't wearing a tie.

Darth stepped aside to let the captain in, "some reason you didn't knock cap?"

"Because I heard something Darth...what exactly was it that I was hearing?"

The agent reached over to the desk and held up a black butterfly, "I was showing him how to program in Matrix code."

"He can use construct code. He's not an idiot."

"I never said or thought he was," she defensively, "but it's different when you're programming from this side of the looking glass. The best code is the one written by machines for programs, it's the most efficient system ever invented since we don't have to worry about IF...THEN...ELSE statements."

"Sorry we're only human," he said caustically.

"Lighten up cap," Darth said, unsure of why he was acting like that.

"For a robot?" he muttered.

"I'm software, not hardware," Stef said as she rubbed her temples, feeling that a agents-are-heartless speech coming on.

Ryder looked at Darth, "only programming...for a second I thought something else was going on."

Darth and Stef locked eyes for a second, both of them knew if they were ever going to tell the rest of the crew about them then this might be the best time before it got completely out of control.

Rather than being subtle, Darth walked over to Stef, motioned for her to stand up, stepped in close, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her deeply.

Ryder's expression went from shock, to horror, to disgust to anger.

"Show off," Stef whispered with a smile as they broke apart.

"Tyler Kinnell...what in HELL do you think you're doing?" Ryder asked with a barely controlled rage.

"I thought it was pretty obvious captain."

"I saw what you did, but I don't understand it."

"And I always thought your captain was a reasonably intelligent man."

"Stay out of this, program!"

"Ryder you're acting like a jerk."

"I'm still your captain, don't talk to me like that."

"So much for treating the first girl to fall in love with me like one of our own, like you said all those times."

"And when a girl falls in love with you I will. That hasn't happened yet."

"Ryder..."

"I'm not a girl?" Stef asked in confusion. She looked down at herself, "I always thought I was girl. I'm lumpy in the right places..."

"A real one," Ryder said as he stepped forward. "Not a fake one. Not a program and hell will freeze over before I treat an agent like a real person."

"Define fake," she snarled at him.

He grabbed her by the collar and punched her in the face. Before Darth could say anything, he punched her again and threw her into the wall, shattering the glass of a framed poster.

"Stef!" Darth yelled as he ran over to her. She just picked herself up and shook the glass off her, not bothering to require another shirt even though the back of hers had been ripped in a few places from the glass. "Are you all right?" he asked worriedly.

She smirked humorlessly at him, "I let him do that. I could have shot him before his first punch landed." She paused, "I could have shifted away or I could have ripped out one of his ribs and stabbed him in the heart with it," she finished quietly. He'd obviously done it to prove a point, so she was going to let him try and prove it.

"That's my girl."

"She's fake. She's a program. She's a bloody, murderous, soulless agent. Why can't you see that? If she was a normal girl she wouldn't be standing, her face would be bruised and her back would be bloody from the glass. Open your eyes Darth and see that."

"Get out of my room Ryder before I..." he walked over to her chair and pulled her gun from her jacket.

"Or you'll shoot me?" Ryder asked incredulously. "You have never killed anyone in your life."

The programmer clicked the safety off, "it's never too late to start."

Ryder walked toward the door, "just think about one thing," he said. "Consider that maybe the only reason it is pretending to have feelings for you is so that she can get information out of you. It happens in other wars," he said as he slammed the door behind him.

Darth turned back to her and went to say something.

"Before you say anything can you yank this piece of glass out of my back?"

He nodded so she turned. He stopped and looked at her back, and it was bleeding. The bigger pieces had cut in deep but most of the smaller shards had been caught in the fabric of her shirt. "Won't it hurt? Aren't you in pain?"

"You can't hurt someone who isn't real."

"There are two people in this room and we are both very real," he said as he pulled it out. He dropped it in the bin and shook his head.

She smiled at him, "thanks, I hate shifting with sharp things sticking into my back." She disappeared and reappeared repaired and with a new shirt.

"I don't know why he's acting like that."

"It's simple, I'm an evil suit-wearing person with no soul. And I'm only after information." She smirked, "now Mr. Rebel," she said with a fake-Russian accent, "if you tell me of the evil rebel plans I will make it worth your while." She rolled her eyes, "he must be losing it if he thinks we have to resort to _those_ tactics."

Darth's eyes glazed over for a second. "What were you thinking right then?" she asked him with a smile.

"...nothing..."

"Tell me."

"Well...on the train of thought of _those_ tactics...Leia's outfit from the beginning of Return of the Jedi..."

"Oh..." she smirked at him, "maybe one day."

Stevie and Cray came running into the room, "what the hell is going on?" Cray demanded. "What is Ryder's problem?"

"What did he say?" Darth asked.

"Something about you losing your mind," Cray said with a shrug. "So did he walk in on you two making out or something?"

"Meep," Stef said. "What? You guys know?"

"A good guess actually," Stevie said. "We figured you'd inform the rest of the wold when you were ready."

Darth shook his head, "now why couldn't Ryder react like that?"

"Because this has changed all of us. The older ones are acting differently. Plus he hasn't had enough time around evil-suit people to realize that some of them are nice."

"I'm still telling Smith you're dating his daughter," Stef said with a smirk.

Cray meeped and looked at the floor, "I'm going to die," he muttered.

"No," Stevie said, "he's my dad, I'll tell him. And who broke the picture?" Stevie asked as she looked at the bent frame and glass splinters.

"Our dear captain threw my girlfriend into the wall after punching her in the face."

"I'm ok Darth."

He shook his head, "it's the principal of the matter. He shouldn't treat anyone like that."

"I'm not an 'anyone' to him, I'm an 'anything.'"

"If he does it again, I'm going to beat the hell out of him."

Stevie sighed happily, "that's sweet."

"Sweet?" Cray questioned, looking slightly hurt.

"That's sweet, but you were brave."

"Now that that's sorted," Darth said, "do you two mind leaving?" The teenagers shrugged and walked out of the room.

"Maybe he's right," Stef said as she sat down on the bed. "Maybe I'm not right for you...maybe we should..."

"Elope?" Darth said out of nowhere. "Or something. They need to know this is serious, Ryder needs to understand the world is a bit different to how he sees it. And that no one is defined by the suit they wear."

"He's not going to change his opinion."

" 'This war probably isn't going to end, no matter what anyone says. The higher-ups say we're going to win but I seriously doubt it. This war is going to last for the lifetime of this earth, without either side ever having a clear victory. My boy, the world might be different when you're grown up or it might be another war, but this truth stays the same. If you find a girl who you love with everything you are, and who loves you back, you take hold of her and never let her go. Worlds end with every order and bullet that's shot but there is light beyond Armageddon if you're in love. The thing that you share, the bond or whatever you want to call it, is the single reason we are alive. Don't you dare let anyone tell you otherwise, or let them take that away from you. All we ever have is right now and if you have someone to share the right now with then you have everything.'"

"Who are you quoting?"

"I've probably messed up a few words but that's basically what he said."

"Who?"

"My grandfather, and he's right."

"Was he in world war two?"

"Yeah, they felt the same way during their war. But it just doesn't apply to wartime, it's all the time. I could care less about Ryder, just so long as I have you."

"I'm yours. You've got me," Stef said with a smile.

"You want approval or something don't you? You want someone besides me to say that they accept us."

She shrugged then reluctantly nodded, "I want to know that someone doesn't think this is a bad idea."

"Then let's..." he started and then her phone rang.

She sighed and answered it, "ok, I'm coming," she said and hung it up. She looked over at Darth, "I have to go."

"I understand."


	2. Agents, Messiahs and Exiles, oh my

**Title:** Choices and Chances

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Rating:** PG-13

**Updated Disclaimer: **

Carlson = Me

**Chapter Word Count: **1365

**Summary:** Carlson, Neo and exiles...

**Notes:** Nope

**Please read and Review.**

"What's going on?" Stef asked Smith as she appeared in his office, requiring back the rest of her suit.

"Anderson," he said with a frown.

"Yeah?" she asked as she sat on the corner of the desk. "So?"

"Stef...maybe I remind you he is our number one target."

"I thought we kind of came to the general consensus to leave him alone, we chase him, he flies away, we waste ammunition, what exactly is the point of that?"

"We have to follow orders."

"And why is this time different to all the other times we have ignored him?" she asked as he shifted them away.

"Because he was spotted with exiles."

Stef looked around at their new surroundings and stopped walking. "Um...do you know where we are?"

"Of course I do."

"You're about to step through a firewall. He's not in there is he?"

"Would I be stepping in there if he wasn't?" Smith asked and stepped into the firewall.

"You are crazy," Stef said as she followed him. "This is so stupid Smith, we can die in here."

"We have to, you aren't afraid are you?"

"No, but I'm also not suicidal."

"I'll protect you," he said with a smile as he drew his gun.

"So anyway," Stef said as she drew her gun and looked around the alleyways for signs of trouble. "You have to come to the mansion sometime today, I think your daughter has something to talk to you about."

"And what would that be?"

"My lips are sealed, she wants to tell you. I wanted to tell you, but she was adamant that she was the one who had to tell you."

"It's nothing bad is it?"

"No, nothing bad."

"Is it something strange?"

"Define strange for a sixteen-year-old."

"Well is it?"

"She is a perfectly normal sixteen year old, she's a perfectly normal girl. I'm the weird one."

"Besides the obvious, what are you referring to?"

"I'm obviously weird? Thanks...Well when I was her age, I had sheets of programming languages plastering my walls."

"That seems reasonable enough, it was an interest of yours..."

"I handed in an English assignment in binary."

He gave her a strange look.

"You are taking this way too seriously. It's not like she's worshipping a satanic cult or anything...Jessica might have but she's past that...it's just something she wants to talk to you about."

"I'll go over later, it's been busy. But right now we have to be on the look out for exiles and Anderson."

"Yeah, Ander-snot. You'll protect me huh Angel Smith?" she said sarcastically as she checked her gun. "Taking me into a firewalled area with that flying freak around, plus the exiles he was seen with, that's completely safe. Some angel you turned out to be..."

There was a dull thud as he hit the ground. She spun and saw him twitching like he was having a glitch and then he went still. In a second flat, she was kneeling beside him. She pulled off his sunglasses, and looked at his eyes. They were still and glassy. She pressed two fingers against his neck and felt for a pulse, but she didn't feel one.

There hadn't been a gunshot, and he wouldn't be this still if he was having a glitch. He looked dead.

Dead.

"Smith?" she asked as her voice trembled. "This isn't funny Smith."

She pulled him up and found the cause, a six-inch-long dart had hit him in the back. She pulled it out and looked at it closely, doing a surface scan, it had been filled with some kind of virus, but she couldn't make out what kind. It had been fast acting, too fast.

Fatal?

No, it couldn't be. He couldn't be dead.

The limp body in her arms said otherwise. "Wake up!" she yelled at him. Laying him back down, she started to shake. "Please wake up."

"That isn't going to happen," a voice said. She looked up and saw Carlson.

"Did you do this?"

The ex-agent grinned, "I was the one who shot him if that's what you mean. My boss wrote the virus and the flying git humanity calls a savior was the bait."

She braced herself, "what's the nature of this virus?"

"Can't you tell? Wipes them clean as a slate."

"How do you repair it?" she asked as she stood up and aimed her gun at him.

"Put that thing down before you hurt yourself. Now either walk out of here or I'll kill you."

She gave him a deadpan expression, "the second I turn my back, you'll shoot me."

"Yeah...innate nature. Yours too, little one, I actually have to admire you having the guts to shoot my boss in the back. He always wears the kevlar though."

"Your boss write this or did he steal it?"

"He wrote it," Carlson said with a smirk, "it's an old favorite of his. He used it on Smith's other bitch as well."

Stef didn't even have time to question that as Carlson walked over, "all this talk has put me in the mood to kill someone. Namely you."

"Gee...that's original."

Carlson's arm moved so fast it was a blur even to her eyes. And then it really hit her, Carlson was just Brown. There wasn't that much difference between them, except for the fact that Brown didn't carry code knives. And she had always accepted that she couldn't win a fight against Brown. Sure they were both agents, but Brown had so much more power and sheer bulk.

Time to retreat.

Ducking the next punch, she dove to the ground, grabbed the front of Smith's suit and started dragging him toward the firewall. Leaping the last ten meters, Smith's body went flying over into safety and she landed half-in and half-out of the firewalled area.

She shifted Smith to the medical ward and tried to get up so she could get out herself but Carlson grabbed one of her feet and dragged her back into the firewalled area.

He bent down and wrenched her right arm at such an angle that she heard it snap, and she screamed in pain as he slammed the broken limb into the wall behind her.

"I love hearing people scream," he said with a smile slammed it against the wall again.

"You got to handle Smith, let me take care of this one." Carlson looked up and saw Neo.

"Get lost you flying git, my vendetta against the agents is more personal than yours."

"I'm starting to understand why our superiors dislike working with each other."

"You have superiors?" Stef asked in as sarcastic a tone as she could manage. "I thought you were their messiah Neon. Little Ander-snot still has to take orders..."

Neo pointed at her and she was pulled out of Carlson's grasp and into the air. Neo glared at the ex-agent and then flew off to a nearby rooftop. "We don't let traitors live," he said as he drove his arm into her.

The blow hadn't been physical, he had altered it so that it was more damaging to her code. Anderson smiled grimly as chunks of her code fell off. He tensed his arm and the stress on her code increased, he was trying to shatter it. It was all she could do to stop from passing out as she ready to fall apart at a base level.

She tried punching him with her unbroken arm but he easily deflected it.

Taking a step back from him with his arm still deep in her code, she saw the edge of the roof and free fell backward, his arm tore out of her as she fell. Using every coherent thought in her head, she managed to land without hurting herself. Stumbling down the alley, she reached in and pulled out her backdoor key. Woozy, she jumped into the hallway and slammed the door shut behind her. Against all of her wishes, she fell to the floor.

The floor was nice. Nice and cool. Stay there for a while. Just rest. Sleep.

"Get the hell up Stef," she ordered herself, "otherwise you're dead." Smith, she needed to know if Smith was ok.


	3. Don't we know him?

**Title:** Choices and Chances

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Rating:** PG-13

**Updated Disclaimer: **

Matrin (yes Matrin, not Martin) = Me

**Chapter Word Count: **1612

**Summary:** whaps Brown with a sthingy looks oops, that's not a summary...ah well

**Notes:** Nope

**Please read and Review.**

Limping down the hall, she left a trail of blood. Holding her middle with her broken arm, she used the other to support herself. The door she needed wasn't far, she just hoped she could make it there without passing out. Her code was pretty messed up, she felt nauseous every time a subroutine tried to make contact with another that wasn't in the right place or wasn't there at all.

And the blood loss was no fun either. Her heart already felt sluggish and her vision was beginning to blur.

Opening the door, she found herself in Darth's room. She couldn't see him, but the door to his bathroom was closed so at least he was home. Falling in a heap on the floor, she kicked the door to the hall closed.

"Cray I told you to leave me alone," Darth said as he walked out, pulling a shirt on.

He looked down at Stef, "oh my god, what happened?" he asked as he knelt down and picked her up.

Holding a handful of his shirt, she looked up at him. "Please get me to the Agency."

"Can't you shift? It'll be quicker?"

"I'm digital dog meat, I don't want to break up in transit."

"All right, just hold on."

Quickly, but smoothly, he carried her down to the living room. Laying her on the couch, he picked up the phone and called a cab. "We need to get a car," he said as it connected.

He ordered the cab and then ran back to the couch. "Listen to me Stef, stay awake. Don't you dare go to sleep. Just concentrate."

"I be ok, hurts like shit," she mumbled.

"You are not ok," he said as he put his arm around her and pressed a pillow to her middle to soak up some of the blood. "Who did this to you?"

"Ander-snot, I'm bleeding cause he screwed up my programming. Tried to break me apart."

"The taxi will be here in a minute."

"I love you."

"Don't say that, people always say that just before they die. You can't die, I won't let you die."

She cracked a weak smile, "you're not blinking."

"I don't blink when I'm worried. I might miss something important."

"Like how you forgot to add that one line of programming to your butterfly so it made it made the wings bash its head."

"You shouldn't be talking."

There was the sound of a horn outside. Darth picked up Stef and carried her out the door.

"You just carried me over the threshold," she murmured.

"Kinda, it was the wrong direction."

The driver looked up and then got out so he could unlock the backdoor. "Shouldn't you have called an ambulance?" he asked as Darth walked over to the cab.

"Just drive," Darth ordered as the driver closed the door after him.

"Where?" he asked as he looked into the backseat. He did a double take as he saw Stef. "Don't worry, I know."

"How could you know? Drive!"

"I know what she is and I know where those people belong."

"What are you?"

"He's a exile. Don't worry about me, I like most of you people 'cept Mero."

"Who? What? Huh?"

"Kid, you aren't blinking. I'm Matrin. Exiles are ex-system programs. And Mero is an evil French guy."

"Can you step on it?"

"Just hold on to something," Matrin said as he accelerated. "You people aren't related to this brown-haired chick that had trouble with the rebels last week? Picked her up about a block from your mansion."

"Stevie," Darth said, "yeah, she's one of us."

About five minutes of speed-law-breaking driving later, Matrin stopped outside the Agency with the motor still running. "I am not sticking around."

"Whatever," Darth said as he carried Stef out of the cab and into the building.

Darth slowed himself down the second he walked into the Agency and wiped the worried expression and fear off his face. Calm, dispassionate, ex-rebel. Has to appear carefree. Ex-rebels don't care if agents live or die.

He just kept telling himself that all of this was a bad dream and he was going to wake up and none of it would have happened. Just a bad dream.

The guards got up when they saw that he was carrying one of theirs. "You got a doc or a tech or something?" he asked. "This agent ain't doing too well."

One of the guards spoke into his walkie-talkie and a second later the doctor appeared.

And then Agent Brown appeared as well.

The doctor immediately required a trolley and lifted her onto it. He unbuttoned the front of her suit and started to inspect the damage.

Brown walked over with a snarl on his face and pulled the doctor back from the trolley before he could require any bandages or sedatives or anything of the kind.

"Wait," he ordered. "She may not need it."

"Yes sir," the doctor said without hesitation. With Smith out for the count, Brown was in charge.

"How and why did you bring her here?" Brown asked Darth.

"Uh...she belongs here doesn't she?" Darth said, taking all the care out of his voice. It was vital that he answer the questions correctly, otherwise it could cost both their lives. "And I took a cab. Sorry, I thought I was doing a favor."

"Why would you want to do the Agency any favors?" Brown hissed at him.

"I may still look like a rebel, but I am a collaborator. I'm thankful to be back here so I have to treat you programs with a measure of respect, if only for the sake of my skin."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Darth shrugged casually, "I thought it would earn me brownie points or something, make you realize that I'm not still in league with the rebellion."

"Brown," Stef said in a painful whisper, "I'm close to flatlining, what is the nature of your problem?"

"How did you come to help her?" Brown asked, continuing as if she hadn't spoken.

"I was walking around, and I saw someone falling off a building. I ran over to catch whoever it was and found it was her. That's the truth."

Brown almost smiled, "and what is your personal opinion of this agen...this woman?"

Darth didn't miss a beat, "that's not a woman, that's an agent. Nothing more, nothing less."

"So you have no feelings for this program?"

"Program," Darth said with a grin, "is the keyword here. Program, not person. I couldn't feel any real attachment to a program any more than I could my computer. If you're confused cause it looked like I was carrying her over the threshold or something, it's just the easiest way to carry something human-shaped."

"...so no feelings, just as a human?"

"Is this a new form of interrogation or something?" Darth shook his head, "feelings? Maybe if she was prettier and I was drunk. The next female agent you program, make it something blond and built, this one just looks like another agent."

Brown just stared at him.

"You think maybe I have a relationship with this agent don't you? Something of a physical nature perhaps? If I could express how disgusting that concept is to me, I would. But instead I'll just do this."

Darth walked over to the trolley, he picked up her broken arm and twisted it up around her back, causing her tears of pain, and then he pushed her back down, making her lean on her broken arm and leant on the wound in her middle, making blood seep through even more of her suit. All the time, he just smiled at her pain.

_IT'S JUST A BAD DREAM! _He had to scream at himself.

Triumphant, he looked up at Brown. "Satisfied? No reasonable human would even cause that much pain to their dog. I could care less if that agent lives or dies, I just don't want to get shot for something I have no involvement in. And as for a physical relationship, aren't you guys built like Barbie dolls or something?"

"Agent Brown," the doctor interrupted, "if you are quite finished with this interrogation of the collaborator, and have any intention of allowing Agent Mimosa to live, I need to treat her now."

Brown shrugged then looked back at Darth, "leave this premises."

Darth turned and walked out of the building without even a look back. A look back wouldn't be a good thing, too dangerous.

He looked around the street, the taxi was gone. He'd have to call another one. He shook his head and walked around the block to look for a phone. The cab was waiting there, the driver looked slightly twitchy, but smiled when he saw Darth.

"You need a ride home or what? Cause this neighborhood is trouble for people like me."

Darth nodded and got into the cab. "Besides," Matrin added, "you didn't pay me for the other fare."

"Sorry," Darth mumbled. "Kind of preoccupied."

"You may want to change your shirt when you get home. You've got agent blood all over you, your high-class neighbors might start thinking you're some kind of crazed murderer."

The programmer smiled humorlessly.

"Well at least you're blinking again," Matrin said, trying to lighten the mood. "You humans bother me when you stop blinking."

Darth shrugged and looked out the window. When they got back to the mansion, he paid for both fares and then up to his room and sat silently, staring at the bloody stain his girlfriend had left on the floor and prayed to whatever divine force that could hear him that she would be all right.


	4. Agents, Angel, Memories and Fantasies

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Four

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer: **

You should know it by now...

Sibneb and crew = Me

**Chapter Word Count: **3109

**Chapter Summary:** ...kind of a different chapter, a lot of time in Darth's headspace, an interesting memory and a funny fantasy...

**Notes:** There are a couple of references in here:

Sidneb = Bendis - One of my favorite comic writers!

Bakav = BKV & AA - Brian K Vaughn and Adrian Alphona, the writer and artist of Runaways

Chen = Jo Chen, the cover artist of Runaways

...meh

**Please read and Review.**

Stef woke up and found herself, to no great surprise, in the medical ward. A drip with green liquid was plugged into the back of her hand and her middle had been tightly bandaged.

The doctor walked over when he saw her sit up, "how do you feel Agent Mimosa?"

"If I say I feel like shit will you report me?" she mumbled as she rubbed her eyes.

"Do not exert yourself, your code was severely damaged. You will need to see Agent Jones as soon as he is free. Unfortunately, his skills have been needed for Agent Smith."

"Smith!" she exclaimed as it just came back to her, "how is he? Is he...?"

"At the moment, he is non-functional, you will need to talk to Jones for more details."

"Fine, I'll go see him now."

"Do you have any concept of how damaged your code was?"

"Not really no, I just know I was in pretty bad shape."

"If you had waited any longer to receive treatment, you would be offline right now while we rebooted half of your subroutines. Just as a bone needs time to knit back together, your code needs time to settle. If you exert yourself in the next twelve hours, the damage will be worse."

"I can't stay still for twelve hours."

"After eight, minor exertion. Any less than eight hours of rest and..."

"I understand doctor. Does walking count as exertion?"

"Shifting would be preferable." He paused as she stood up. "You have died once in this room, I would hope you aren't intent on a repeat performance."

"Eight hours, I'll rest for eight hours," she said resignedly as she shifted to Jones' lab.

After a talk with Jones, she shifted to Darth's room. The programmer was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into space.

He looked up after noticing her, "oh thank god you're all right. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said as she sat down next to him and kissed him, "thank you."

He turned to look at her, his eyes were red from crying. "How can you even look at me after what I did to you?"

"Only someone who truly loved me and understood me would have done that. Thank you. And don't feel guilty, you had to do it otherwise Brown might have shot us both."

"How do you really feel? You don't look too good."

"That's just the medical-ward-bed hair. The doctor said if I didn't stay relatively still for twelve hours then nothing he did would matter. Ander-snot messed my code up pretty good. I said I had no intention of staying still that long. He relented and said eight hours, if I push myself in the next eight hours I may as well have let jerk-off finish what he started."

"That bad?"

"Getting injuries in firewalled areas suck."

"You are going to get some sleep aren't you?"

"Actually I think I'm going to fall unconscious but it's all the same," said as she leant against him. He half-stood and wrapped his arms around her, standing up, he carried her to the top of the bed. He put her under the blanket and then walked around the other side.

Sliding in behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close in an effort to keep her safe while she slept. "Now you just sleep," he said softly, "I'll look after you."

But she was already asleep.

He wanted to kill Neo for hurting her, but that probably wasn't going to happen so he'd have to settle for helping her to recover. He felt sick inside because he knew he'd come close to losing her.

At least she was resting, her breathing was slow and steady, if not a little tense. He looked down at her, she seemed so small and frail, no part agent, just a young woman who'd almost been killed.

She was younger than him, not by much, about a year but still it mattered. So many people hated the agents utterly, damned them all totally. It was understandable, it was a war but still, they were people as well as programs.

_Programs are people too_, it was a graffiti that was tagged around the city. No one was quite sure who did it, but a lot of the programmers in the real world liked it, even if their friends teased them about it.

The recruits to the rebellion were taught, from their very first week out, to hate and fear every person and program in a black suit as a messenger of death. Agent or recruit, it didn't matter just so long as you were the one who shot them first and survived.

The hate was so old now that it almost seemed to be a racial memory, the war between man and the machines, started so long ago that there were only a few that even remembered how it started. The teachers would always say 'we don't know who started it' in a tone that implied that it was the machines.

Even though, on average, more rebels were killed by sentinels than by agents each year, the agents were the ones who the rebellion hated. Maybe because they looked like they were human it made them so much easier to hate.

Stef twisted in his arms, and her breathing started to get shallow. Her face contorted in pain and she looked like she was having a nightmare.

"Shh..." he whispered and tried to calm her down.

One of her hands gripped at the pillow tightly, "not Whitman don't delete me!" she cried softly before exhaling a long breath and settling again.

Whitman...that name sounded kind of familiar.

That's right, a ghost story he had heard once. Sometimes, ships flying near each other would dock together for the night, that way, everyone got to sleep longer with more people on sentinel-watch.

The operator on the Sidneb was a neo-religious fanatic. Neo as in new, as in new religion, not as in the First Church of Neo the Savior (which actually exists in Zion...) would take points to an extreme. And when he couldn't make an extreme point without people getting scared, he would relent and put things in story form, usually altering a ghost story or scary-campfire story to fit his point or express his opinion better.

The Exodus had been docked with the Sidneb the night Bakav had told the story about a girl named Whitman.

Carol Whitman was a story told on dark nights when the tunnels seemed to be filled with the shadows of sentinels. How much of it was actually true and how much had been made up he wasn't sure, but he would find out one day.

About fifty years ago, the agents had started recruiting. There had been a captain at that time called Zeus. Zeus was a man respected on the same level as Morpheus, but unlike Morpheus, he had actually been a brilliant man.

That's where this story begins.

"_Are you Exy brats going to calm down so I can tell the story?" Bakav asked the two new Exodus recruits, Cray and Niq. _

"_Sorry," they said and finally found a comfortable place on the floor. _

"_Zeus, the god of thunder. Zeus, the captain of the Chimera, was a great man. And one day this god among men found an angel."_

"_Just tell the story priest," Galli muttered._

"_An angel named Carol, who was just as sweet and innocent as the Christmas songs she was named for."_

"_How many people do we contact that are really sweet and innocent?" one of the Sidneb crewmembers piped up. _

"_Just let me tell the story," Bakav said as he rolled his eyes. "But then this god and his second in command were taken by the very hand of death. The grim reaper who carries no scythe, the Agent known as Smith." _

_Bakav smiled, now his listeners had shut up. "He stole this young angel away and corrupted her with his lies. Turning her against the very people who she had once loved. One of the people she had loved tried to give her the only release he could, to end once and for all her corrupted life. But the evil programs would not let her rest. They did not let her have the rest that she had earned from living. They did not have the decency to let her die." _

"_Huh?" Chen, a member of the Sidneb crew asked, "say that again in English." _

"_Machines and programs and especially agents have no soul or even a concept of one, therefore they do not and did not how very wrong...no, wrong isn't the right word...the taboo of it, the corruption of the life cycle, the violation of a person's right t death..."_

"_Stay away from the engine degreaser," Chen said. _

"_By the use of their technology, they brought her back to life. They ignored her nurture and changed her nature. They made her into a soulless, black-hearted, suited killer like them. They made an angel into an agent." _

_There was complete silence in the room. _

"_The agents stole her humanity from her. I imagine that most of it was lost in the transfer but some part of her must have survived. Can you imagine what it would be like for your soul to turn black against your wishes? For the light in your life to be snuffed out? To have to live your life everyday knowing that you are something different to what you were born? To have to exist with the knowledge that you are no longer human...that you are something less? Can you imagine what it would be like to have to live as a half-formed ghost in a machine?" _

Darth stared at the wall, he'd heard this story so long ago and hadn't remembered it until he had heard the name Whitman just then.

She must have been the prototype, the first one. And also, the one who hadn't lasted. A lot of people knew the other half of the story, that one of the Agents' own had tried to destroy them. Only a few people put two and two together and realized that Whitman was that person.

_Can you imagine what it would be like to have to live as a half-formed ghost in a machine?_

Stef wasn't like that. She wasn't a half-formed ghost. At least, he didn't think she was. She didn't seem to be but then again, he didn't know everything about her. He would one day, but he didn't yet.

From what he did know, her memories and consciousness had been uploaded in entirety, with no problems.

But...some of what Bakav had said...being treated as if she wasn't human or less than human. Being hated and feared for what she was, not who she was, that had to be a tough burden to bear.

He wondered, with a mental chuckle, what their situation would have been like if he was the agent and she had been the rebel.

_A dashingly handsome young man in an agent suit stared at a group of rebels who had just said the strangest thing, that they wanted to be collaborators. _

_Their captain stood out in front, and his second in command stood beside him, and just off to the side stood a young woman who for some reason caught his eye. _

_There wasn't really anything out of the ordinary about her, certainly not the standard rebel outfit she was wearing, but for some reason he couldn't look away. _

__

_He didn't feel right, always visiting the collaborator mansion. Partly because he wasn't sure if he was entirely welcome and because he felt selfish for visiting. Spending time with humans to feel less like a program. Not that he disliked being a program, he loved it and for someone who had been a programmer, it almost seemed like some kind of ultimate destiny. _

_He was Agent Kinnell (as even Smith refused to call him Agent Darth) through and through, but before that he had been Tyler and Darth. He hoped that Unseen would see that. He had told her that he hadn't always been an agent, but he wasn't sure how human she thought he was. _

_He'd kissed her and she'd kissed him back. And that had been that. _

His little fantasy had made him realize one thing. That had been that. And nothing would change that, he didn't want anything to change that. The accepted each other and they loved each other, that was enough for them so why couldn't it be enough for Ryder?

By now, the captain would have informed Pandora, Phoenix and Galli. They would have to be ready for their reactions as well. He rolled his eyes, that was not going to be a fun day.

And slowly, his mind filled with a million different thoughts, he fell asleep.

When he woke up the next morning, Stef had curled up into a ball and was still holding onto the pillow. He tried to slip his arm out from around her middle without waking her, but failed.

"Nurg," she groaned as she opened her eyes. "Where did that light come from?"

"The sun?" he offered helpfully with a grin. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're cute when you're asleep?"

"I wasn't asleep, I was unconscious."

"Nope, sleeping."

"Really?"

"I wouldn't lie to you."

"Nurg," she said again and sat up. Undoing the lower half of her shirt buttons, she started to unwrap the bandage.

"Is that a good idea?"

"I feel like I'm mostly back together." Pulling the rest of the bandage away, she found an ugly bruise in a pattern that denoted that she had been a lot closer to shattering than she cared to think about.

"I thought you didn't bruise."

"It's only superficial," she said as she required it away. "And it only happened because the doc treated me instead of Jones."

"Why didn't he help you?"

"He was trying to help Smith," she said softly.

"Did this happen to Smith as well?"

"Smith is dead."

"WHAT?"

"At least, Jones thinks so, I'm not sure."

"...thinks so?" Darth echoed, "shouldn't it be obvious?"

"Not in this case. Smith's code has been wiped clean, his physical body is there but it's just an empty shell."

"Did he get deleted?"

"No, if it were that simple, his body would be gone as well. This is something different."

"You've got to tell Stevie."

"I am not telling that girl anything until I know whether or not she has to grieve. I'm willing to bet that the data is something, I just have to find it."

"So how are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to go straight to the source of the problem, the one who made the virus, Mero."

"The um 'evil French guy'?"

"It would be best if you forgot that little conversation with that taxi driver. You see, I'm supposed to shoot exiles on sight, but I don't want to do that because PAPT."

"PAPT?"

"Programs are people too."

"I know that graffiti."

"I know the artist."

"Cool. Now, can I get you anything?"

"Um...coffee would be nice, I can get it though," she said as the cup appeared in her hand.

Darth went quiet and listened for a moment, "is that your phone ringing?"

"Huh?"

"You phone, where is it?"

She held out her hand and the ringing phone appeared in it. She answered it and held it up to her ear. "Hello?" she arched an eyebrow, "Jones, how did you get this number?" She hung up a minute later and looked longingly at her coffee.

"You have to go," he said knowingly.

"Emergency. I have to give my report about what happened yesterday so that we can judge the best course of action for Smith."

"What do you think is going to happen?"

"I think I know, I just don't want to say it incase I jinx it."

"That bad?"

"You have no idea."

He took the coffee cup off her, "go, you can tell me what happened when you come back."

"But I wanted coffee," she said with a pout.

"You're going to miss your meeting." She sighed and disappeared.

Appearing outside the conference room, she looked down and made sure that her suit was as tidy as possible before she walked into the room.

Brown was the only one in there. "Sit," he ordered, "and report exactly what happened to Smith."

"Where are Jones and Clarke?"

"They aren't coming," he replied curtly.

She sat across from Brown, as straight as her back would go, even though her middle still hurt a bit. Not all of her subroutines had finished knitting back together.

"At three PM yesterday afternoon, Agent Smith and I were ordered into a firewalled area..." she started.

It took her about five minutes to give her report, and she could practically see Brown mentally killing things when she mentioned Carlson. The fact that Anderson hadn't finished shattering her code seemed to be the only thing that disappointed.

"Is that all sir?"

"For the moment. And just so you know experimental, until Smith or his replacement are online, I am in charge of this facility." Was what he said but what he didn't say was: _So watch your back, because without Smith to protect you, how long do you think it's going to be before I convince the mainframe to get rid of you?_

Even though he didn't say it out loud or over the earpiece, the meaning was clear between both of them.

"So if Smith's data cannot be recovered, Jones is going to bring a copy online?"

"Of course," Brown said as he walked out of the room.

_I was afraid of that, _she thought as silently prayed they could get Smith back online. She swore that if they brought a copy online, she was just going to quit and go exile. If he was really dead, she could learn to get over it, but not with a copy around. A copy that looked and sounded like Smith but wasn't really him.

Exiles...

The Merovingian would be the only one who knew about this virus, but wasn't likely to tell her. Well...she'd just have to persuade him, she thought with a smirk and shifted away.

Given that it was daytime, he would probably either be in the chateaux or the restaurant. She had no way into the chateaux and had no wish to go there anyway, too secure and too few ways out.

Then to Le Vrai it was.


	5. Where Smithy went

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Five

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1318

**Summary:** Smithy ain't dead...and that's not all...

**Notes:** I'm not putting any notes, no delay, read it!

**Please read and Review.**

After he had been shot in the back with the dart, Smith's consciousness had grown dim until it had faded out. And after a while he had come back into being, and fallen. Smith had fallen, down through darkness toward the unseen bottom.

He blacked out on impact. He woke up some time later, next to a rough orange concrete wall and lying on a floor of much the same color, but not texture. The room was dark, the only light coming from a few dim bulbs.

Smith sat up and looked around in surprise, he had absolutely no idea where he was. It looked like it was underground, at least it had that feel to it. He was on the edge of a large room, there was a barred barricade, but it was open at the moment.

The large room beyond the bars was sparse, but he could see a few dark shapes - people presumably - moving about. Beyond that, he could see a few dark hallways leading back further into the place.

"Hello?" he called, this had to be the exiles' doing, unless of course, somehow the rebels had managed to pull his code out of the Matrix and this was a construct program they were using to distract him. He dismissed that, that was giving the rebels way to much credit.

"Why haven't you disappeared yet?" a voice from off to the side asked him. He turned and saw a woman - judging by the voice anyway, she was wearing a large and heavy cloak hewn from a rough material.

The voice sounded familiar. A voice he could never forget. But he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions yet.

"Disappeared?" he asked as he stood up. "Why would I disappear?"

"I know what you are," she said with a sniff. "You're just a feedback error. I do like seeing you again though."

That comment clinched it, the voice was the one he remembered. But that was impossible...wasn't it?

"Where are we?" he asked.

"There's no point telling you, you're not real," she whispered sadly. "I know that for a fact. Nothing in here is real. This is hell, or something. You can't leave, you can't die, you can't live. It's nothing, it's nowhere, these people if you want to call them that are no one, they have ceased to be anything they were, if they were anyone at all."

He knew the voice, he knew that he knew her voice. "Take off your hood," he said as he walked over to her.

"Why should I listen to you? You're just some apparition. Feedback error. Coding reflects want you want to see and hear, but not touch."

He reached across and grabbed her hood, her hand shot up to stop his hand and then she froze. "I can feel you, I can touch you."

"I'm real, I'm really here."

"And you're warm."

"So?" he asked, not seeing how that was important compared with who she was.

"It goes away after a while, you forget what warm and cold feels like, there's not really any heat or cold here. No seasons. I can feel your warmth." She reached out her hand and touched his face.

He extended his fingers so that he could hold her face. Trembling, he reached up with his other hand and pulled her hood back. Tears welled up in his eyes as he saw for himself who she was, that it really was her. "Ivy..." he whispered, almost afraid to believe his own senses.

"God I wish you were real," Ivy mumbled as she closed her eyes. "You have no idea how much I wish you were real. The feedback errors must be getting stronger, it can't really be you."

"Ivy?" he whispered, hoping that she wouldn't disappear. "Is that you?"

"Yeah, but it's not you."

"You died. I saw your body."

"I came here. But..." she shook her head.

He kissed her. Holding her thin form close against him, he kissed her as tears rolled down his face. Then he took a step back, "Ivy?" it really was her, that had been the proof he needed. Whatever this place was, she was real and she was here. Her body may be dead in the Matrix, but something of her had survived.

A single tear rolled down her face, "Is it really you?"

"You have to believe me. I don't know how this can be, but I don't care."

"Neither do I," she said as she kissed him back.

"I can't believe you're alive," Smith said as he held her. "I never thought I would see you again."

"Stop talking," she said with a playful smile, "we are going to make the most of this time, just in case this is a dream or something."

"And what do you have in mind?" he asked her with a smile.

"The same thing I had in mind the day I died," she said as she pulled him toward the room she had claimed as her own.

Later.

"How long has it been?" Ivy asked him as she wrapped her arms around Smith's chest.

"A little over ten years," he replied as his fingers traced intricate patterns over her bare back.

"That long?"

"You didn't know?"

"You don't really have a good sense of time in this place, it's as though it doesn't really exist here," she replied as she pulled the thin sheet up over them both.

"Do you have any idea of where here is?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

He thought back, "something hit me in the back, a dart I think. It had a virus in it."

"That's quite a bit nicer than the last thing I remember before coming here." She shuddered and he pulled her closer.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want."

"If I don't tell you who I am I supposed to tell?" She took a deep breath. "I was finding a nice dress, remember we were going to go on a date?" He nodded. "I had been hoping to do what we just did then...and then these two guys grabbed me and pulled me into this alley, I though they were just some punks...then I looked at them. They were werewolves, and there was also a vamp, and a guy who was like eight feet tall." She grimaced, "the tall guy threw something at my eyes and then I couldn't see. I was fighting back, they were making enough noise for me to hear where they were, but I couldn't beat all of them. They shoved me and I fell down, I tried to require my earpiece but it wouldn't appear. I heard a door slam and then the wolves started. Their claws were so sharp," she took a deep breath, "then someone hit me in the back of the head and I fell down. I just knew I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. Someone poured something into my mouth and then...one of the wolves tore out my throat."

He had seen the injuries on the body, but now it was worse that he knew how she had gotten them. After she hadn't come to see him that night, he had shifted to her location and found her body dumped carelessly in a dumpster.

"I woke up here, I was sore for a while but I had none of the injuries. I just figured this is what death was like, not very grandiose, at least in hell there is fire and some kind of experience, every day here is a like a hell, because there's just nothing. And there's no one."

"You're not alone anymore."

"I know," she said as she kissed him again. They were both determined to make the most of their time together, and not waste even one minute.


	6. Information

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Six

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer: **

Meh...you know it as well as I do

**Chapter Word Count: **1517

**Chapter Summary:** Mero spills his guts...almost literally...

**Notes:** I don't think there's any for this chapter

**Please read and Review.**

The building Le Vrai was in, was thankfully, a mainly human establishment. Stef had never wondered about that, but today she was just thankful.

Mero was perverse, predictable, and drank too much wine. So instead of wandering right into the dining room, where all of his guards were - which would end up in a fight with lots of scared civilians and no information being given, she waited down near the bathroom.

Sitting in the alcove with one of the phones, it afforded her a good vantage position and he wouldn't immediately be aware of an agent in his place of business.

It didn't take long enough, but it took long enough for him to appear. As soon as the door swung shut, she looked around to make sure no one was watching her and followed him in.

Subtlety is for the subtle.

"Where is he Mero?" Stef demanded as she none-too-gently jammed her gun against the back of his head. He turned and sneered down at her.

"And how exactly did you know how to find me?" he asked, curious, but he never let his sneering attitude drop away.

"I'm full of surprises. Now tell me where he is."

"This iz so sad, ze putain is mizzing her master."

"Tell me where he is or I'm going to splatter your brains all over the wall."

"If you pull that trigger, my guards will find you and execute you."

"I reprogrammed it with an in-built silencer." A little white lie, but one that would surely work to her advantage.

"You clever putain."

"Tell. Me. Where. He. Is."

"Why? You'll shoot me anyway."

"Tell me, or I'll make you wish you were dead."

"I'm so scared, I'm quivering in fear," he said sarcastically.

She spun him around and smashed his face into the mirror. Then she turned him around and punched him in the ribs a few times. She let him go and he slipped to the floor muttering in French.

"Are you ready to tell me now Mero?" she asked him in a deceptively sweet quite.

He went to say something but she held up her hand, "I didn't even break one rib, so if you don't cooperate, I'll start on them. And if you still insist on being non-cooperative I'll break every other bone in your body. So before you say what you were going to say, think about it."

He spat some blood onto the floor and looked up, "he's nowhere you stupid bitch," he said without his oh-so-fake accent. "Hasn't your tech told you that yet? He is nowhere, that virus wipes the program clean. Are you happy now?"

"But where did the data go?"

"It went nowhere, are you having trouble understanding me? He's dead."

"He can't be dead."

"Accept it, get over it, and either shoot me or get out of my restaurant."

"Unless it broke him down character by character, he has to be somewhere. If he's been wiped clean, where did the program go?"

"It's just gone."

"When a program is deleted, it goes exile. When you delete stuff off your computer it goes and gets recycled. Everything goes somewhere."

The Merovingian just stared at her. "Checkmate you bastard," she whispered, "you never thought of that did you?"

"Of course I did," he lied, "...but I have no idea where it went."

"No, I can see it on your face. You just thought he was deleted. You have no idea where he went. How many other people have you used this 'foolproof' virus on?"

"You don't need to be concerned with that."

"That would mean a lot, and if none of them have come back, then they must be somewhere separate to the Matrix. It must be somewhere else...somewhere that doesn't have a way for them to get back."

"A backroom?" Mero asked in spite of himself.

"No, you would have had to have shunted the code there. Backrooms are structured, and enough programs would be able to hack a way out."

"If they aren't in the Matrix itself and they aren't in a backroom, then they aren't anywhere."

"Don't be so naïve. You created this virus, you must have some idea."

"0x1x0x1."

"What the hell is that?"

"The destination code, a random nonsense number. The deleted code was shunted to zero. To nowhere."

"Shunted nowhere, somewhere, nowhere, somewhere" she whispered. Something about that made her stop and think.

Then she went very still and stared at him. He looked at her expression, "you've figured it out?" he asked in surprise.

"I think so."

"Tell me!"

"Don't think so," she said and emptied her clip into his chest, knowing that he was wearing a kevlar. Just in case she was wrong, she didn't want her source of information to be dead.

Even though he was in a lot of pain, The Merovingian smirked to himself.

She walked out of the bathroom and found a door and made her way into the backdoor corridor, she walked down the hall scanning each door as she went. She was looking for something out of place. She kept walking until she came upon a door. She opened it with her key and looked around, it was just an ordinary door, but it was also a double of an already existing door that was somewhere else in the maze of hallways. She closed it and then stared.

Pulling out her gun, she shot at it. After a moment, the damage just repaired itself. She shot at the lock a few times until it fell off, she kicked it but the door didn't budge. She knelt and looked through the hole that her bullets had made and saw blackness.

Blackness, not nothingness. Blackness was nothing, but it was something nothing, rather than nothing nothing.

She sat down against the wall. She knew that she could get to where she wanted to go, or at least open the door in the way that she wanted, but how long it would stay open and how she was going to get back were her other problems.

She needed a technical opinion on this, someone that understood coding better than her. It wasn't like she could walk up and ask Jones, for besides deleting her on the grounds that she was a traitor for associating with exiles, he was the one who was looking after Smith and she wanted to give him every chance to do something on his end, anything that would give him a better chance.

Smith was not dead. She would not accept the fact that he was dead. He was fine...he was just lost somewhere beyond the Matrix. "Times like this I wish god wasn't evil," she muttered under her breath.

She needed someone to help her.

Charlie? No, he was too paranoid to help.

Vorateu? No way of contacting him.

Mero and etc? Oh look, a snowball...In Hell!

Hummer?

"Help me, Hummer-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope," she said sarcastically to no one in particular as she walked down toward his place.

She opened the door and looked around. The place was swarming with small children. "Hum?" she called.

The hippy walked into the room with a little girl on his shoulders with her hands over his eyes and Nat was attached to his leg like a koala hitching a ride.

"Nat your dad is so cool!" one of the slightly older kids, a boy about five, yelled out.

"My brother not my dad," Nat said and detached from Hummer to run over to Stef. "Party!"

Hummer lifted the little girl's hands off his eyes, "kitty want to party with us?"

Stef shook her head, "I need help."

Hummer looked at the gaggle of kids, "I'll be back in five minutes, don't destroy the place, and if you do, just leave the TV safe."

It's amazing how evil small children can look.

Hummer walked out into the backdoor. "The childcare center has to close down for the day, and I'm the only one who doesn't work nine-to-five so I've got to look after them."

"I wish you luck."

"You don't look too well, you seen a doctor?"

"Yeah, I did...Hummer, if you were jumping into this unknown place and needed a way to anchor your code to the Matrix so that you could get back, what would you do?"

"Dude...you'll have to give me a minute to think about that one." He sighed and thought for a long minute. "You would have to physically anchor yourself to the Matrix," he said in a serious voice that didn't fit his multicolor exterior. "A string would do it."

"String?"

"A code string. Pull a surface subroutine away from yourself and it will form a string of characters, and once that one runs out, another will follow it. They pull away the useless stuff first, but just so you know, system programs aren't made of junk."

"So if I go too far I'll be pulling my guts out?"

"Yep. So be careful. Where are you going anyway?"

"I really have no clue, I'll tell you when...if...I get back."


	7. A choice

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Seven

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1979

**Notes:** ...nope

Oh, one: Largo is a reference to Megatokyo.

**Please read and Review.**

Stef nodded in thanks and walked away from Hummer and back to the strange door. She took a deep breath and shot out the hinges of the backdoor, hoping that no exiles came anywhere near her, as she wasn't quite sure she would be able to explain why exactly she was shooting up their perfect hallway - but at least the sound of the gunshots didn't echo that far.

She shot them a few more times until the locks broke and then she ripped the door away from the frame and threw it against the other wall. The door left a green and coded trail and it exploded about three seconds after impacting the wall, like a time delay, or as if it was moving at a different rate of time.

And then she was confronted by the black something nothingness, it was eerie and quiet. Something like this shouldn't exist, and yet, it did. She wondered if she was the only one who had ever seen this, the something that lay beyond the backdoor.

One day, she would have to check to see if there was anything behind any of the others.

Pulling up the bottom of her shirt, she gently tugged at her skin and pulled a surface subroutine away from the bulk of her code. She pulled it carefully out, just in case it broke, but after it seemed to hold, she pulled it out more quickly so she that she a pool of near-invisible code-string piled at her feet.

She placed the beginning of it where the lock had been, and then encased the doorframe in it a few times, luckily, it had no problem adhering to the wood.

She stepped to the edge of the doorway and let her toes of her shoes dangle over into the nothingness. She could very well be wrong, this really could be nothing. This could be death. And she hadn't even bothered writing a will.

" 'In the end we fall anyway, so we have to them know that we were here,'" she quoted.

Then without another word, she stepped off into the darkness.

It was a long fall, she could feel the wind whipping at her clothes and the light from the hallway was receding faster than she could calculate until she could barely make it out. She twisted in mid-air toward the inevitable ground.

Then all at once, there was ground, rushing up altogether too quickly. Landing in a heap on a dark stone floor, Stef jumped up and looked into the darkness, "why didn't I bring a torch?" she questioned herself.

She walked toward a faint light source. As she approached it, it got brighter and brighter until she walked into the center of...something. There were doors and passageways leading off it. Some of them had bars on them and some had gates across them.

"0x1x0x1," she whispered, "only in this world does a nonsensical, impossible statement that like create a place like this." She could see vague shapes in the shadows, "please don't be zombies," she said, "don't have time for zombies. If I come back, I'm bringing Largo."

Logically, Smith should be right where she was standing, in an open area with some light. Not because he was afraid of the dark, but because it seemed a logical place to be as it could be an entry or exit point.

But, she had no idea of the movement of time in here, if it was the same as the outside world, or if he was still alive or if the zombies had eaten him...

"Oh shut up," she told herself. "The guy can take care of himself." There was probably more than one 'rotunda' anyway.

Only one way to find out.

"SMITH!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, and with the lack of things in the tunnels and passageways, she knew it would reverb and echo enough for him to hear.

The shadow-shapes stopped moving, as if they were afraid of the loud noise. She knew just by looking at the place that there weren't a lot of loud noises in this lost part of the Matrix.

"Fine then," she said as she started down the first passageway on her left, "I'll find you myself."

"Did you hear something?" Smith asked Ivy as he half sat up.

"No," she mumbled, "now go back to sleep."

He nuzzled at her neck and drifted back to sleep.

"This place needs street signs," Stef said with a sigh. "Or a surveillance system, or a scanner or something. And a vending machine." Time was running out, she didn't have the time to search every dead-end corridor, lest she get trapped there herself.

"Smith!" she yelled again, hoping he was close enough to hear her now.

"I know I heard something this time Ivy," Smith said as he sat up. "I have to go see what it is."

"It's probably one of the other people that are trapped down here. Either that, or it's your first figment."

"I do not hallucinate."

"It's the coding of this place, I told you already, it reflects back auditory and visual feedback of what you want to see and hear. They aren't real though."

"I have to check this for myself."

"Don't leave me Smith," Ivy pleaded as she wrapped her thin arms around him, "I just got you back, don't you dare leave me."

"I have no intention of leaving you."

"I think I'll really die if I lose you again."

"I'm not going to leave you. Now...where are my pants?"

"I have no idea," Ivy said with a coy smile, "it's not like they're important anyway."

"Maybe not in here, but I would prefer not to walk around naked out there."

"Smith!" he heard someone call.

"Stef?" he whispered in confusion as he hurriedly pulled on his pants. He ran over to the door and pulled it open and saw...nothing.

"I told you," Ivy said, "it's just feedback."

"Stef?" he called down the empty hall.

"Finally!" she said triumphantly and ran toward the source of the call.

"Feedback?" Smith questioned when he didn't hear or see anything else.

"You're out past your curfew young man," he heard someone say. He turned and saw Stef.

"Are you a feedback error?" he asked her.

Her jaw dropped and she just stared at him, "I've been worried sick about you. I'm risking my life to save you. I'm tearing my code apart to get us a safe way back and you call me a feedback error? That's one hell of a thank you."

She ran over to him and through her arms around him, "I was really worried about you ada."

"Tactile contact," Ivy said fearfully. "She's real? She's not a feedback error?"

"Who's she?" Stef asked as she let him go and looked into the room.

"Ivy this is Stef, Stef this is Ivy."

Stef stared at the woman, in her late twenties if she guessed right, almost as tall as Smith, with hazel eyes and dull honey-blond hair. Stef looked at the clothes strewn on the floor, "I'm guessing you two knew each other before you landed in the bowels of hell."

"She was my girlfriend," Smith explained, "ten years ago, before she was killed."

"Ok, that is going to require a bit of explanation, but it can wait until later. Come on both of you. The gateway is closing."

"What gateway?" Smith asked as he threw Ivy's clothes to her.

"It's a firewalled and hacked door in that firewalled area. You have to shatter through the outer programming before you can gain temporary access to this place."

"How did you get this information?"

"I beat up one of the Merovingian's henchmen until he spilled his guts. But for you Smith, I would have beaten up Mero himself."

"Figuratively or literally spilled his guts?" Smith asked with a smirk.

"Figuratively. I did what any agent does to any exile. I beat him up."

"I always find," Smith said as he buttoned his shirt up, "that with exiles, they are easier to beat if they are dazed, so try and..."

"Later Smith," she said as she cut him off, "we're escaping on borrowed time."

She could have finished his sentence for him, it's impossible to forget what an agent does to an exile after being on the receiving end. Exiles, rather than rebels, are the ones who see the true power of an agent.

..._smack their heads into a wall so hard it starts bleeding. Beat them until all they can taste is blood and until they can't even see the gun jammed against their head ..._

Involuntarily, she shuddered at the memory.

"How do we get out of here?" Smith asked.

Stef concentrated for a second and then the string of code lit up with a faint green light. "Follow the breadcrumbs," she said with a smile.

"Smith?" Ivy said quietly as they followed Stef. "You said you weren't going to leave me."

"I'm not leaving you, we're both going back."

"I can't go back."

Smith stopped and looked back at her, "what?"

"If I go back to your world, if I go back to the Matrix, I will die."

"Why didn't you say something before?"

"Why?" she almost screamed at him. "Rescues don't happen. No one ever gets rescued, no one ever gets to leave this place. No one. We all have to stay here forever."

"But we have found a way out." He went quiet for a minute. "Does this mean I can't leave either?"

"Were you torn apart?" she asked him softly.

"I don't know," he said honestly before turning to Stef. "Was I?"

"No, and Jones has your perfect-condition brain-dead corpse in his lab."

Ivy winced, "see? You'll be fine. I can't. This coding is only stable in here, once we leave, it will try and reintegrate with the rest of us. The rest of me is dead, shredded, flushed and has long since been recycled. I have to stay here, but you don't."

Smith looked over at Stef, "I can't leave her here alone again."

Stef steadied her gaze, "I am not leaving you here."

"And I'm not leaving her. If she can't come back, then I'm staying here."

"You can't be serious."

"You would make the same decision if this was you and Darth."

"He wouldn't make me choose."

"Don't be so naïve."

"Are you really telling me that you're willing to spend the rest of your life in this place? To spend forever in nothingness."

"I will rather that than leave the woman I love alone in nothingness. I couldn't live with myself if I left her here."

"So what do I tell Stevie?" Smith went quiet and looked away, "so Smith? What do I tell your daughter?"

"Don't tell her anything," he said quietly, "just let her believe that I'm dead."

"She doesn't believe anything. I haven't told her anything yet. I was hoping I could bring you back so I held off telling her anything, I didn't want to make her worry."

Smith looked back at Ivy, "I've made my decision."

"You have got to be joking."

"I'm not."

"Smith..."

"I am staying here."

Without another word, Stef walked away from him, following the faintly glowing string of code and storing the excess back where it belonged as she gathered her 'breadcrumb trail' back up.

When she reached her entry point, she jumped back up to the near-invisible speck of light and then crashed back through the backdoor.

Lying on her back and looking up at the bright white ceiling, she concentrated and retracted the last of the code-string back inside. Taking a minute to do a self-diagnostic to make sure she was still working in good condition, she reflected on what had just happened.


	8. Systers and The System

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Eight

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **2287

**Notes:** Niet

**Please read and Review.**

Her self-diagnostic flashed red, and red is never good. The string she had pulled off was having trouble fully reintegrating itself into her code. Apparently pulling her guts out after her code had been damaged by Ander-snot hadn't been the smartest idea she had ever had.

Not to mention, the code string was having trouble communicating with several helper subroutines that the doctor had given her to speed up her recovery. The problem was stemming from the fact that the subroutines he had given her had been programmed specifically for agent code.

And as much of an agent as she was, she was written slightly different to the other agents, and so, sometimes different things had different effects on her. Communication errors were usually minor, something that she didn't even notice, but this time was quite a bit more serious than when subroutine 7658-90-a couldn't communicate properly with subroutine 9725-56-w and the result was that subroutine 8954-87-p had to be used instead of 3126-78-s. Stuff like that was trivial, but if the string and the helper subroutines couldn't work with each other, the helpers were going to reject the code string and eventually more of it would follow until she was nothing more than a pile of string on the floor.

"Come on," she whispered, "don't screw up, just repair so I can get out of this freaky white hallway."

She performed another diagnostic but it flashed red again. She winced and pulled out all of the subroutines again, and then slowly fed it back in, allowing each to acclimatize and communicate before putting the next one in, it was slow, tedious and painful, but it was working.

After an hour, her hands were covered with her own blood and a handful of green characters that had fallen off the slowly degrading subroutines but at least she was fixed. She stood up and walked toward a door to the collaborator mansion.

She put her key in and walked through into the kitchen. Turning on the tap, she let the cool water run over her hands and wash the blood off them. Dreamily, she watched the blood circle in the sink and slip down the drain until the water ran clean. She turned off the tap and turned around.

Stevie had been watching her.

Stef did a double-take, "where did you come from?"

"Living room. Stef what in hell is going on?"

"What do you mean?" she asked as she walked past her, wanting to avoid this conversation for as long as possible.

"Don't play dumb, you know what I mean."

"Steves, I need to sit down ok?"

"Where's dad?"

"Smith?"

Stevie rolled her eyes, "who else would I be talking about?"

"Can we talk later? I really don't feel good."

"What happened?"

"Well Ander-snot tried to shatter me, he might have thrown junk at you and tried to choke you but if I had to explain to you in human terms what he did to me...I'd have get a chainsaw and stab you with it, and then injure all of your internal organs and let a vampire suck out a pint and a half of blood."

"Where's my dad?"

"Later Stevie."

"I'm not belittling the fact you got really hurt, but WHERE THE HELL IS MY DAD?" Stevie yelled.

"Leave me alone Stevie," Stef said as she pushed past her and headed for the stairs.

Stevie tackled her to the floor, "where is he?!" she demanded. "Is he dead?" she asked in a quieter tone as Stef pushed her off.

"Come here sis," Stef said quietly as she held out her arms. She held onto Stevie, "this isn't going to be easy for you to hear." She felt Stevie shudder. "He's not dead...but I don't think you're going to see him for a while."

"Where is he? Or is he sick or what is going on?"

"I can't really explain."

"Why not?"

Instead of an explanation that would break her heart, Stef chose to go with the lie. "Because it's all technical stuff that would sound like gibberish to you. It sounds like gibberish to me, Jones had to explain every single bit to me, it took two hours."

Stevie gave her a deadpan stare, "then give the quick version."

"You know how we teleport around?" Stef asked, hoping Stevie would believe this explanation, "he's kind of...stuck for lack of a better word, and his data is all corrupt so he has to get fixed."

"Oh, ok. So why didn't you just tell me that in the first place?"

"I wasn't sure you'd understand."

"Cray's the one who's failing in school, not me."

"What is the Smurf failing?" Stef asked as they stood up.

"I'm not failing anything," he said as he walked down the stairs.

"What about that note Miss Corcastle gave you to give to your parent/guardian?"

"Note?" Stef asked, glad that the topic was on something trivial like this.

"Your son/daughter/charge - circle appropriate - grade for this subject has been dropping and this may affect their end result. And it's math he's failing."

Cray made a face, "they give those to everybody."

"I didn't get one," Stevie said.

"Just for that, I'm not bringing you breakfast in bed anymore."

"Oooh..."

"You bring her breakfast in bed?"

"I have twice, aren't boyfriends supposed to do that kind of stuff?"

"Usually, people your age aren't living together."

"I was trying to be nice after that whole thing with Ander-snot."

Stef winced and looked over at Stevie, "next time you shoot him, make sure it's a head shot."

"Sure thing."

"I will see you guys later, I need to lie down." As strange as it sounded to her to even say that, she really did feel exhausted to the core, as well as sore. Lying down sounded like a good idea, and if she was relaxed, she might be able to figure out what to do - if there was anything she could do - about Smith.

She walked up to Darth's room, but he wasn't there, so she kicked off her shoes and collapsed on the bed, pulling a pillow under her head.

11111

Darth walked into the mansion about twenty minutes later, with a big brown paper bag in his arms. Shopping was done sporadically, so instead of one decent shop a week, there were at least four trips each week, but no one really minded.

He walked into the kitchen and the phone started ringing, he dumped the bag down and picked it up. "Hello?"

"It's me," Galli said.

Darth sighed inwardly and sat up on the bench, "yeah Galli?"

"So is it true?" Galli asked him in a serious tone.

"Yeah," Darth said with a long sigh, "it's true, so go ahead and yell or tease or say your piece. I've had one serving from the captain, I guess I can handle another."

"I meant was it true that Cray beat my Doom score, but if you want to talk about _that_ then I guess we can."

Darth's mouth dropped open, "you find out that my girlfriend is an agent, an 'evil-suit-person' and you're worried about your Doom score?"

"I have priorities," Galli said with a grin in his voice. "Darth you were never going to find someone out here, you and Zion chicks don't mix. I'm all for it, I'm just glad you're spending time with something that doesn't have a CD-ROM drive." There was a pause. "She doesn't...does she?"

"Nah...DVD-ROM," he said with a wry grin.

"Ha ha," Galli said dryly and paused for moment. "Now the guy-guy half of my brain wants to know if you've hacked or _hacked_ her yet."

"No and no."

"That's no fun."

"Is Ryder still pissed off?"

"Darth, he's going through your computer looking for that prototype 'kill the evil suit people' virus."

Darth felt his lungs turn to lead, "you're kidding. He can't be...oh shit, I completely forgot about that."

"Breathe and blink my friend," Galli whispered, "the disk is hidden in my underwear drawer and I'm going to destroy it as soon as they go into the Matrix next."

Darth let out a big sigh of relief, "thank you Galli...but can I ask why it's hidden in your underwear?"

"I kinda already knew about this. I check in on you guys every so often and one night I saw you and your girlfriend. I thought you were living in sin but since you guys aren't hacking each other, I think it's kind of...cute."

"And you never told the captain?"

"It's not my place to tell."

"Thanks Galli."

"I got to go, I think I hear the captain coming."

The programmer smiled happily and hung up the phone, he dumped the foodstuffs away and walked up to his room with a bag of cookies under his arm. He pushed open the door to his room and found Stef lying across the middle of the bed staring at the roof.

"Stef?" he asked, he was sure he could see her breathing, but after what had happened, he didn't like seeing her this still.

She lifted her head and smiled wanly, "hey."

"So what happened?" he asked.

She groaned and pulled another pillow of her face. "I don't want to talk about it," she said through the pillow.

He closed the door and sat down beside her, "you can tell me." She said something that was muffled by the pillow. He picked up the pillow, "want to try that again? I don't understand pillow talk. Or rather, talking through pillow talk."

"Nurg..." she said and pulled the pillow back down.

"Did you find him?"

"Yeah..." she said as she sat up.

"That doesn't sound too convincing."

"He's alive, as in living. But he didn't want to come back to the Matrix...what am I supposed to make of that? I even lied to Stevie about it cause I don't know what to think or do."

" 'Come back to the Matrix?'" Darth questioned, "then where is he?"

"0x1x0x1, nowhere and somewhere, it's kind of hard to explain. He's in a place no one knows how to find. A nonsensical shunt point that has really interesting architecture."

"Why wouldn't he want to come back?"

"Well, he doesn't want to leave his girlfriend behind."

Darth blinked a few times, "his what?"

"His supposedly dead girlfriend. She's actually in the shunt point, and since she can't come back, he doesn't want to leave her."

"So he's going to stay there for a while?"

"Judging by what he said to me, he's prepared to stay there forever."

"Forever? That's really heavy."

"I don't get it, surely if he came back out he could find a way to make her code stable so she wouldn't break down."

"Steffie," Darth said gently, "what if it's more than that?"

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

"Do not, in any way, take this as offense, but the Mainframe isn't exactly big on the idea of agents being in love is it? And the death penalty seems to be the punishment for basically everything. What if he just wants a break from that for a while?"

"Why can't he just accept things the way they are? Like we have to. Like everyone has to."

"Wouldn't you prefer if the system wasn't so harsh?"

"Of course, no reasonable person would choose to have to live like this. But I adapted, there are ways to get around the rules, he knows that...but Smith is a man of extremes."

"Well, that goes without saying. So maybe he just wants a break for a while, I doubt he could choose to live forever in some nowhere place."

"I'm not sure, he's made a few decisions that are or were pretty permanent."

"Like Carol Whitman?" Darth asked.

"How the hell do you know about her?"

"Ghost story. Poor little angel corrupted by an agent."

"If you ever associate Carol with angel again I'm going to ask what hard drugs you are taking."

"She's that bad huh?"

Stef nodded, "she's committed horrific murder, don't make me say more than that. She was the first, she's why Brown hates me so much, he thinks I'm going to turn into her."

"Well you're not."

"I know, but the guy has a stick so far up his ass it obscures his vision."

"Are you going to be ok?"

"I'm not sure. When...or rather if I can get back into there, cause I don't know how stable the place is or if the way I got in will still work, I still don't know if he'll want to come back."

"He won't want to stay there forever," Darth said, "he's got so much out here."

"This will kill Stevie if I tell her, so I am going to hold off telling her as long as I can. I just don't know what to do, it's not going to take the Mainframe that long to decide to bring a replacement online."

"I'm sure he misses you too, not just Stevie."

"I'm replaceable."

"You're irreplaceable."

"I'm irresponsible that's what I am, I was so wound up about what happened with Ryder that I wasn't completely alert and on guard for all possible dangers, this is all my fault."

"No it's not, you couldn't have known someone was waiting with a dart, how often do you face people using darts in this day and age?"

"I should probably go, I don't want Brown to get even madder at me or worse, come looking for me."

"You can tell him you're thanking me."

"He wouldn't believe that anymore than he would wear a pink suit."

He kissed her as she shifted away. Darth sighed, then ate a cookie.


	9. A Deal, Blood Red Wings and the Second C...

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Nine

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1927

**Notes:** Um....don't think so

**Please read and Review.**

Stef shifted to her office, looked around in boredom, then shifted down to Jones' lab. The tech wasn't in, probably in his office, or consulting the Mainframe.

She walked over to the slab in the middle of the room, Smith's body was lying on it. There were monitoring screens all around, outputting many readouts that all basically said 'nothing is happening'.

She shivered, his eyes were open, it wouldn't matter to the others, cause they were able to put it in a better context than her, but to her it looked like a dead body staring up at her. She knew he wasn't dead but still...

"What are you doing here?" she cringed, it was Brown.

She turned, "I'm...I was seeing if there was any change."

He stared down at her, "how much data do you need to tell you that there isn't any change and that there isn't going to be any change?"

"I can understand these screens. But the data must have gone somewhere."

"Such as where?"

"I don't know sir. But perhaps somewhere rather than nowhere."

"Only the one who created this virus would know."

"The Merovingian. But it's not likely that he's going to want to explain to an agent that the details of one of his effective weapons."

"He has many henchmen, one should be able to give us the information."

"Agent Brown are you going to find one of these henchmen?"

"Not alone," he said as he shifted them to the edge of the firewalled area.

They walked over into the firewalled area without another word. She knew the only reason he had brought her alone was just in case a firefight broke out, he would make sure that she was 'accidentally' caught in the crossfire.

After wandering around in silence for about five minutes, there was a thud behind them, and they spun around, guns ready, and saw Carlson. Brown and Carlson stared at each other for a tense second before rushing at each other. Stef took a couple of steps back and watched as the two programs beat the stuffing out of each other.

About three minutes later, they both stopped as they each had a gun pointed at the others head, tempting the other to fire. "You wanna talk now?" Carlson said with a sneer.

"Yes, I have something to discuss with you."

"And that would be?"

"Smith."

"Funny, I need to discuss that with you too."

Stef was silently getting freaked out by watching the two of them, so disturbing the same, yet totally different. Both of them together was almost wrong. No, it was very wrong.

"My boss is willing to a trade."

"We don't make deals with exiles," Brown said flatly.

"You will want to make this one. It's a simple trade. We give you Smith back, and all my boss wants is the experimental."

"What?" Stef asked incredulously. For one, Mero didn't have Smith. And two, if he did, he wouldn't give him up.

"Deal," Brown said.

"Brown?" Stef asked in disbelief. "Um hello? You just made a deal with the exiles, and without the Mainframe's consent, or mine."

"An experiment for an original, something that simple does not require the permission of the Mainframe."

"I'll take her now and I'll bring Smith here tomorrow." Brown gave a curt nod to his copy and walked away.

"Asshole," Stef muttered after him.

Carlson looked at her, "are you going to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

"I don't believe he bought that you actually had Smith."

"And I don't believe that he doesn't realize you are a traitor."

"You know, I have a hard time figuring out which one of you jerks I hate more."

Carlson almost smirked, "trust me, it's him. Now follow me."

"Unlikely."

He took out a PDA and aimed it toward her, an electronic screaming filled her head, it was enough to disorientate her for a few seconds. Carlson walked forward, grabbed her arm and pulled her into the backdoors where Mero was waiting.

"Ok, my day now officially sucks," she muttered.

"You're going to take us to Smith. Now." The Merovingian ordered.

"Go screw your escargot," she said with a sneer.

Carlson pressed the tip of his code knife into her neck and she felt a small trickle of blood leak from the wound. "Now you little bitch, before I have to break your arm again, do what the boss says."

"Well, you have to let me go first."

Mero nodded, and Carlson slowly let her go, waiting for signs of a trick. "Follow me," she said resignedly and walked down the hall toward the mystery door.

"Shoot the hinges," she said to Carlson as she pointed to it.

"Boss?"

"Do it."

Carlson shot the hinges off the door, Stef walked forward and pulled the door away from the frame, throwing it to the floor. It disappeared in a cloud of green characters.

Grabbing Carlson's hand, she pulled at a subroutine close to the surface and pressed it to the doorframe. Pulling more of it out, she enclosed the entire frame and pointed to the blackness. "It's in there."

"In there?" The Merovingian asked incredulously, "but that's nothing."

"No," Stef said with a smirk as she wiped the blood away with the back of her suit sleeve, "it's something nothing. Zero is nothing, one is something. 0x1x0x1. That's where he is. Watch out for the first step though, the landing sucks."

"Well, that's not a problem," Mero said as he pulled a PDA out of his suit and attached a wire to Carlson's neck. He pressed several things with the small stylus and Carlson shut his eyes for a moment.

A minute later, the back of the ex-agent's camouflage suit moved and something tried to push it's way out until it ripped and a pair of huge, blood-red angel wings sprouted from his back.

Carlson flexed them a few times. Mero smiled thinly, "though I have modified them somewhat, they are the wings of my first Judas."

"Those are Seraph's wings?" she asked, "that's sick," she added quietly.

"Yes," he replied, "now they can be temporarily assigned to whomever I wish. It solves problems like this."

Without another word, the three programs stepped into the darkness.

The free fall through the blackness took about two minutes. And then the ground appeared all too suddenly.

Carlson and the Merovingian touched down silently, and Stef landed in a rough crouch. "Now don't go running off and getting any ideas..." Mero warned her as Carlson took out a flashlight.

"You don't need that," Stef said with a snort, "your eyes adjust soon enough."

"Well? Take us to Smith."

Sighing, she started to lead them through the maze of passageways towards Ivy's room.

As they got nearer, however, they heard _something_ echoing down the passageway. Carlson and Stef stopped walking, but Mero kept walking. He turned and looked at them as if to say what's wrong.

"Boss, there are several things I never want to see, and that's one of them." Before Mero could say anything else, Carlson pulled out his gun and fired four shots into the roof.

The echoing noise stopped. A few minutes later, a half-dressed Smith opened the door and saw Mero and Carlson. He turned back to the room, "find my gun Ivy."

"Not a good idea Smith."

"Stef?"

"If you take a step to your left you'll notice that Brown's evil twin brother has a gun pointed at me head. Don't get your gun."

Mero beckoned to Smith, "you and your putain, out here, now." Smith walked back into the room, and emerged with his shirt on and Ivy. "Now," the Frenchman continued, "since I'm feeling uncharacteristically charitable. I'm going to give you a choice."

"And what choice is that?"

"Which one of your bitches do you want to take back to the Matrix?"

"Ivy can't leave this place," he stated flatly.

"I have the means to make it possible. Stabilizing her code is a simple enough matter. For me anyway, I doubt your useless tech could manage anything quite this advanced."

After a long moment, Smith replied, "then I choose Ivy."

"You jerk!" Stef yelled at him. Mero nodded to Carlson who hit her over the head with his gun.

Smith watched silently as Stef fell to the floor unconscious. Ivy wrapped her arms around him, "thank you," she said as she leant up and kissed him.

Mero walked over and stuck the wire from his PDA into Ivy's neck and entered a code. She shook a little and then smiled, he removed the wire and walked back over to near Carlson.

"Follow us," Mero demanded.

Smith looked down at Stef as they walked past. He had had to make a choice, and he had made it, for good or ill. "Forgive me," he whispered voicelessly as they walked down the corridor.

The strange group made their way through the rotunda and out to the exit point. Mero pointed his PDA at Smith and it emitted a high-pitched frequency. Smith teetered a bit, but Ivy held him steady. "Are you ok?" she asked him.

"I'm blind..." he announced slowly.

"The effect is temporary," Mero announced. Carlson grabbed Smith by his collar and Ivy held onto Smith. The Merovingian put his hand on Carlson's other shoulder and the ex-agent flew them all back up to the backdoor corridor.

Crashing through the repairing backdoor, they landed quite a bit less elegantly than when they had landed in 0x1x0x1. "Remind me to cut your pay," Mero hissed angrily.

Ivy guided the temporarily blind Smith down the hall, following the other two programs. Carlson opened one of the doors into the chateaux and everyone followed him in.

By the time that Smith's blindness had worn off, he was cuffed and they were in a room full of computer equipment and a chair with restraints.

"My how the mighty have fallen," The Merovingian said with a laugh. "To think, if I had know all these years that all it took to capture the great Agent Smith was a mere woman, I would have been in control of this world by now."

"If you are planning on trying to access my agent coding for your own uses, then you are wasting your time, the security is too heavy for a second-rate exile like you to break through," Smith said with a sneer.

"Indeed. Well I am not planning on spending my time acting like a hacker, so you are the one who's going to remove the security for me."

"That is not going to happen."

Mero snapped his fingers and Carlson, now without the wings, grabbed Ivy and held her up against the wall. "Carlson enjoys killing humans, so either you hack through your own code, you second-rate system program, or Carlson gets to play with your girlfriend, and if there's anything left when he's finished, my wolves get a new chew toy."

Smith looked up at Ivy, and she had tears of fear streaming down her face, "don't let them hurt me Smith...please."

Smith walked over to the exile's computer and started inputting the codes that would allow him to access his security programming. It was going to take a long while, system program security is tight, agent security is tighter, and his security was the greatest of all, since he was the first agent, and was senior to all of the others. The Alpha Agent, if you will.

And the Alpha Agent had just lost to an enemy.


	10. In the night

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Ten

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **848

**Notes:** Sorry it's so short, but this chappie belongs on its own.

**Please read and Review.**

Night fell over the Matrix.

Darth was asleep, more out of exhaustion than anything else. He half-woke up when he heard his door open and close. "Who's there?" he murmured as someone walked across the floor and sat on the bed beside him.

Someone gently tilted his head up and slid something silky over his eyes...a tie by the size of it. Before he had a chance to react, they quickly tied it in a knot and laid his head back down.

"What's going on?" he started to ask but the someone...Stef, it had to be Stef, no one else in the house wore a tie - or would be using it in such a manner...pressed a finger to his lips and silence him.

He felt her weight shift in the bed, and then she put her hands on his chest, she kept them there for a moment and then she moved them up to his collar and tore his shirt down the middle. She pushed it away and then started to kiss his chest.

Darth reached up and pulled the tie from over his eyes, he had no intention of staying in the dark any longer.

And in the pale light, he saw a head of white-blond hair. Not Stef. Niq. Not Stef. He froze and then pushed her off him. Jumping out of bed, he flicked the attic light on. "What the hell are you doing?" he yelled.

"A minute ago it was pretty obvious," Niq said as she picked herself up and smiled.

"It was pretty obvious because I thought you were someone else," he said then he took in what she was wearing. A see-through nightgown and red lingerie. He put his hand over his eyes. "For god's sake, put on some clothes."

"Why? Don't you like what you see?"

"I'm a decent guy Niq, I have no intention of ogling another woman - especially one in her underwear - while I have a girlfriend."

"There's no law against looking," she said as she sauntered over to him and tried to pull his hand away from his eyes. "And there's no harm if that she-agent doesn't find out."

Darth clenched his teeth and walked past her and over to his window, "was this Ryder's idea or something? Niq...why did you do that?"

"This was not Ryder's idea. But he did tell me about what's going on, I'm sorry."

He spun around, "what are you sorry for?"

"That you had to find someone less than human to find someone."

He turned back to the window, "don't you ever say that again."

"I just thought you weren't interested in finding someone yet. I never knew...none of us knew...why'd you hide it?"

"We were afraid - and rightly so - of what you would think, and we knew you wouldn't understand or accept it."

"Why her?"

"Because I love her, and that's all the justification I need or you're going to get."

"But how can you, she's one of _them_. An agent. A killer. Don't you remember how scared we used to be of them?"

"We're collaborators, we get to look past the guns and suits now."

"You're very good at looking past things."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Niq walked over to him, leant her head on his shoulder and hung an arm over his chest. "You looked straight past me and saw her instead."

"What?" he asked as he took a few steps away, not comfortable with her invading his personal space after what she had just done.

"I was right here, I've always been right here, am I that easy to look past? So easy to forget what happened between us?"

Darth pulled open his wardrobe and threw his dressing gown at her. Slightly miffed, she put it on. "Niq, this is the last time I am going to tell you this. Nothing happened between us that night. You were so drunk you didn't know what the hell was going on, I, on other hand was completely sober. You walked into my cabin, stripped naked and got into my bunk. I just walked out and left you to sleep it off."

"Yeah, right. I wasn't that drunk, I remember."

"You were so drunk it took you forty-eight hours before you could eat. You almost gave yourself alcohol poisoning, don't you remember that."

"Yeah, I also remember us. What happened between us."

"You must have dreamed it." He shook his head, "so what was your motive for coming up here tonight?"

"Two reasons, I wanted to make you realize that programs are never as good as the originals, and when you get over this phase and this agent, I'll still be here."

Darth shook the ripped shirt off and pulled on a new one, slipping his feet into his shoes, he picked up his wallet and left the room without another word.

He made his way to Stonehenge, which was open for all-night gaming, paid the fee, and fell asleep on one of the couches. It didn't bother the owners, he'd done it before.


	11. Meet the Zombies

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Eleven

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1721

**Notes: **I wasn't going to upload so many chapters today...but here they are anyway...

**Please read and Review.**

Stef woke up, and rubbed her head, knowing that there was a bruise there. She stood up and looked around. She was stuck in hell, it had been Carlson' string so she had no link to the Matrix, no way back.

No way back. No way home. This was going to be her prison forever...unless the zombies ate her.

As she walked down the hall, the weight of her reality set in. She really wasn't going to get out here. This was nothing and nowhere, the only way out was when you went in. She ran to the rotunda and through to the room they had landed in.

She jumped up as high as she could, remembering how far the door had been up. She looked around as she passed it...but there was nothing, as if there had been no door there ever. Nothing above and only hell below...how very appropriate she mused as she turned and fell back down, this time she landed so hard that the floor cracked.

"No!" she screamed at nothing in particular and punched the floor. "No!" she beat her hands against the rough concrete floor, and then slumped, defeated. She slowly picked herself up and walked back down one of the other corridors, wiping the tears from her face.

Only then did she notice her knuckles were bleeding. She kicked open one of the doors to a room and found an old mattress and sheet, no one had used them for a long time.

Sitting on the mattress she took off her tie and wrapped it around the one that bleeding the worst, and tore a strip off the sheet for the other. Even in this lost place, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to heal.

But what was the point in healing them? She wasn't going to get out of there, she was going to be alone forever. She lay down on the mattress and tried to get as comfortable as possible, given that the mattress was covered with dust buildup from an unknown amount years and there was no pillow.

She was never going to see Darth again.

She wasn't going to ever see anyone ever again, but the prospect of never seeing Darth again broke her up inside.

She choked back a sob, but the tears fell anyway. Unless Mero got drunk and felt generous enough to get her out of there, there was no way she was ever going to get to see Darth again.

She used the sheet as a handkerchief and wiped her face with it, well at least, if she was gone, he'd be able to find a normal girl, a human who his crew could accept, instead of a half-breed experimental agent who did nothing but complicate his life. He'd be better off without her.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to miss him.

She grabbed the corner of the mattress and cried into it, weeping for what she had lost and what had never been and could never be.

Even though she knew it wasn't possible, sometimes in the dead of night, she had imagined what it would be like to be normal, living without the war or the Mainframe, just being young and in love without having to worry about anything, like it should be.

Then she sat up and slapped herself, "crying isn't going to solve anything," she said to herself. "You know that. Stop being a wuss and get up and do something."

_But I'm tired, I'm in pain and I have no way out of here. _

"Stop whining."

_Sleep first? Then figure a way out of here?_

"A couple of hours, nothing more. Just enough to get back to full strength."

Ok... 

So she fell asleep, determined that when she woke up she was going to get a way out of there.

Some time later, she was woken up by someone roughly shaking her, "you wanna live?" the man asked her.

"Huh?" she asked as she rubbed her head.

"They're coming," he said as he pulled her to her feet and started running down the corridor.

"Who?" she called after him. "And who are you?"

"Hank McCoy, people call me The Beast."

"Ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh," she said as she tried to keep up with him. He was a tall, bulky, rugged-looking man.

"Hurry up!" he said as he increased his speed even more.

"Who the hell are we running from?"

"We're in an assassin's playground, where the hell do you think we are?"

"The bowels of hell."

"This place ain't as nice as that." He grabbed her arm and jumped fifteen feet straight up and then into a small crawlspace. "Now quiet if you value your life."

She looked past him and saw a bunch of other programs hiding in the same space. She went to ask something but his hand clamped over her mouth and grew shaggy brown fur and claws. A bear's hand. He looked at her with golden eyes and shook a single claw at her.

She nodded and sat quietly.

"Dear god help me!" a man screamed from the hallways below. Several of the programs in the crawlspace leaned forward to see who it was that in trouble.

It wasn't unusual for a program to use seemingly religious sayings, it wasn't that they had faith, they were just appropriate at the time.

A dark-skinned man with blue clawed hands was thrown against a wall by a vampire. The vamp chuckled and watched as the man tried to get up, but he was bleeding from a wound in his leg.

The vamp took out a dagger with an elaborate handle and twirled it menacingly, "you know, the wolf-brothers are right, this place is fun."

Stef shot the werebear a look, "are you going to let him kill that guy?" she mumbled through his hand.

The werebear looked at all the programs and whispered, "the needs of the many outweigh that of the few."

"Yeah well," she said as she pulled his hand away and jumped from the crawlspace, "watch Star Trek sometime!" Tackling the vampire to the ground, she grabbed his dagger and stabbed him in the heart with it.

With a scream, he disintegrated and turned to dust. Only CAH vampires do that. Real vampires don't turn to dust, only the ones who had been human, as the coding was inherently unstable.

She tossed the dagger to the ground, "well, that's some of the anger out of my system." She looked down at the exile who was tearing strips off his shirt to bandage the wound in his leg.

"Are there any others down there Scai?" the werebear called down.

"No," the man called up. "He was the only one left."

"Are you sure? It sounded like there was a lot," the werebear said as he jumped down.

"There was," Scai replied, "two more CAH vamps, but I took care of them."

"They're getting better," he said as he shook his head. He looked up at the crawlspace, "you guys are right to leave now, but be careful." He looked at Stef, "I'm Joshua, who the hell are you?"

"Someone who feels like an utter, total and complete idiot. I don't believe that that bastard actually outsmarted me."

Scai took a look at her and then scrambled back, holding out his claws in a defense position, "forget idiot, that's agent."

"What?" Joshua exclaimed as he jumped back and transformed more toward a bear.

"Relax," Stef said. "Except for that stupid Frenchman, his traitorous ex-agent lapdog and the rest of the jerks who work for him, I like exiles. And I think I need your help."

Scai relaxed, "I at least owe you one. What are you doing down here anyway?"

"I don't believe he tricked me," she muttered. "I bought it, I bought it hook, line and stinker."

Scai looked at Joshua, "you have any idea what she's going on about?"

"I thought this place didn't exist, I thought you people being here was a mistake, I mistake Mero overlooked, that he didn't know you were here. I never even thought about it, I was just happy that Smith was alive. I'm such an idiot."

"Merv programmed this place, it's a prison," Joshua explained. "He doesn't keep all of his prisoners in the cells of the chateaux, the ones he's finished with come here. And then his assassins and henchmen use as target practice, we're just shooting gallery ducks, fair game."

"Is there a way out of here?"

"If there was, would we still be here?" Scai asked her.

"But there is a way back to the Matrix?"

"Back to?" the werebear asked her, "where are we then, the magical land of Oz? This is just a programmed room tacked onto the dungeon. Nothing fancy."

"But I came in through the backdoors..."

"Then it was a backdoor, literal one, into a program. Like a computer program, instead of a location cheat within the Matrix, the door you took was a program cheat."

"If I had a key, could I get out of here?"

"I suppose it would be possible," Joshua said, "but no one in here has a key."

Stef patted all her pockets and fished out her key, "not quite no one." Scai and Joshua looked at it like it was the Holy Grail or something equally precious.

"How come they didn't take that off you?" Scai asked in amazement.

"They didn't know I had it with me, we used their one of their keys to get into the backdoors."

"We're finally getting out of here," Joshua said, "we all were prepared to die in here."

"The funny thing about being prepared to die," Stef said with a nostalgic smile, "is that those are times you usually live. Now which door?"

"There are a lot of doors in here," Scai said, "but only a few actually work with a key, we know this because the assassins and whatnot only use a few, if the others worked, they would use them as well."

"Good point."

"We'll have to gather everyone up," Joshua said.

"Then do it," Stef ordered as she pulled the impromptu bandages off, her hands were better now, and it was time to get the hell out of hell.


	12. Love

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Twelve

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **447

**Notes:** This is so very short, but so very important.

**Please read and Review.**

Smith typed in the last line of coding, "there, I have done what you asked, now let Ivy go."

"Sit down in that chair," Mero said as he pointed to a chair with restraints that Carlson was standing beside. Smith did as he was asked. Triumphant, The Merovingian smiled and nodded to Carlson who tightened all of the restraints.

"Finally," the powerful exile said with an elated smile. "I've finally won."

"Does this mean I can finally drop this ridiculous act?" Ivy asked him.

"By all means my dear," he said as he walked over to the wall and retrieved a bottle of wine and three glasses from a hidden compartment.

"Act?" Smith asked.

He watched in silent and utter horror as Ivy melted away to reveal another person. A shapeshifting exile woman with olive skin and red hair. "Yes Smith, act."

Smith felt his heart break into small glass shards that proceeded to cut him apart from the inside. "Ivy?"

"My name is Kyla. I'm no more your Ivy than Carlson is," she said with a laugh as she accepted the glass from her boss.

"But..." Smith started, at a loss for words, "you knew everything..."

She smirked, "human minds are so easy to hack, especially when their bodies are broken. Now, if you not-so-gentlemen will excuse me, I really need a shower."

"No..." Smith said hopelessly. "I don't believe it."

"Your problem is," Mero said with a smile, "you did believe it. You never questioned her for a minute. You saw Ivy and you took my bait. Neo, the virus, the underground prison, and your girlfriend, all of that was to get you here, and to get you to break through your own security coding. Game, set and match, I win agent. And you have lost so very badly that I almost feel sorry for you. I would, but I'm too busy savoring my victory."

Smith just hung his head in shame at being so very fooled so very easily. The Merovingian, one of the single greatest threats from the exile world was now getting access to agent coding and it was all his fault. If the exiles didn't kill him, he was going to get deleted for this.

And what hurt him the most was the fact that his time with Ivy hadn't been real. That he had believed and loved a copy, a fake. That the woman he had loved really was dead. He had really loved Ivy, even if perhaps he hadn't expressed it enough while she had been alive.

Carlson left the room after a minute, and then so did the Merovingian, and so he was left alone with his thoughts.


	13. Broken Angels

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Thirteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **871

**Please read and Review.**

An hour later Smith looked up as two ghosts phased through the floor, when they became solid he saw it was the Twins.

"Isn't this pathetic brother?" the one his left asked. "Poor little agent..."

"Indeed brother, it's lame."

"No, lame is your girlfriend thinking about buying Cain and Abel flea collars."

"Do shut up about that in front of the agent or I'll knock you out and feed you to Vlad."

Smith gave the exiles a look and they shrugged, remembering that they were there for some other reason than petty bickering with each other.

"Boss is...busy you might say," one of them said to him. "So you get to spend the night in the dungeon and you get pulled apart tomorrow."

"Undo the restraints One," Two said as he shut down the computer. The other twin undid the restraints.

As soon as he was free of his restraints, Smith leapt out of the chair and charged at the twin. One simply phased and Smith ran through him and landed on the floor. Two neatly hopped through his phased brother and drew his razor. He sliced it down the agent's leg, and Smith stared at the bloody line and torn fabric. As he watched them expertly twirl their razors, he realized it was useless to fight.

"The boss wants you in one piece, don't make us disappoint him."

One put his razor away and rummaged around in a cupboard and pulled out an electric shock collar and clapped it around Smith's neck. For a demonstration, he pressed the button on the remote and watched as volts ran through the agent.

Smith dropped his head, and got up to his feet and demurely followed them to the dungeon. He's been beaten, he had been utterly beaten by his own emotions, and he deserved to be deleted.

The twins threw him into a dark, concrete cell and he blacked out as he hit the wall.

_There was a knock at his door, he looked up from his work, "come in." _

_Slowly, the door was pushed open, and Agent Whitman walked in. It had been three days since she had become an agent and she hadn't said much of anything in those seventy-two hours, except for quietly accepting orders and following them to the letter. _

_He wasn't sure if that was her choice, or part of the problem of transferring a human to an agent, but she didn't seem to have the same attitude as the recruit he had...rescued...if you wanted to call it that, from the enemy. She was a changed person. Whether or not it was for the better, he wasn't sure yet. Only time would tell that. _

_Whitman gave him the smallest hint of a smile and put a small box on the desk in front of him. It was wrapped in black paper with a white ribbon tied around it. "I don't understand," he said. _

"_I just..." she started, "I just wanted to get you a present...a thank you I guess. I hope you like it," she said quietly. _

_Smith picked up the box and looked at it, he had never received a present before. It was a human thing. "You have to unwrap it," she said when she saw his confusion. _

_He slowly pulled the ribbon away and ripped the paper open to reveal a simple white box. He put the paper down on his desk and opened the box and pulled out an hourglass. "Thank you," he said. _

"_I was wandering around all the shops, just tying to find something that fit your personality, and wasn't stupid. I hope you like it." _

"_Yes, thank you Carol," he said with a smile as he turned it upside down and watched the white sand fall down to the bottom and begin to pile up. _

"_You're welcome," she said with a slight smile of her own. _

Smith woke up and rubbed his head, having no idea why hitting the wall had jarred that memory. Deep down, he had always felt sorry for her. Perhaps he shouldn't have brought her back, he hadn't even been sure she had wanted to come back. Even though he had done it twice, it really wasn't his place to play the life giver. 'To play god,' as Carol had put it.

He still had that hourglass, buried under a pile of paperwork in one of his desk drawers. After she had been deleted the first time, he had thrown it in the wall in anger, but after calming down and realizing that they could recover from the damage - even if the recruitment program was on hiatus for a while - he had repaired it and stowed it in his desk.

And as the years had worn on, he had begun to feel sorry for Carol. No one could find the fault, so perhaps it hadn't been her fault that she had turned homicidal. Perhaps it had just been an error. A fatal error for her, but an error all the same.

He found a comfortable position on the floor and attempted to rest, knowing that he would need all of his strength and at the same time dreading what was to come.


	14. Inspirational Speeches

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Fourteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1000

**Please read and Review.**

Joshua had gathered up all of the exiles - which had taken a long time, considering the maze-like structure of the playground - and they were now making their way toward a door they had seen a lot of the assassins come through.

Stef followed him up to the front of the crowd, and got confused when all of the exiles looked expectantly at her. "What do they want?" she whispered to Joshua.

"You're supposed to say something."

"Supposed to?"

"You know, like they do in movies. Probably not all of us are going to make it out of there alive, they want you to say something."

"Why don't you?"

"You're the one with the key, you're getting us out of here. You're the one talking."

"I hate speeches, they remind me too much of Morpheus" she muttered. "Ok..." she looked out at the exiles. "I am going to tell you this like it is. When I open this door we are going into the chateaux, I don't have to tell you it's not a good place to be, and problem number one is only certain keys work. The Keymaker should solve that problem. As soon as we get in there, we get to him first and get some keys. As soon as you've got a key, get the hell out of there, if you see someone you help them and get out together. Mero has got so many guards its not funny so be as quiet as you can, and hopefully we can get out this with a minimum of casualties. But I don't expect everyone to get out alive."

Joshua nudged her in the ribs, "that wasn't very inspirational."

Stef smirked the exiles and went for something quick, "this is not the time for inspirational speeches, this is the time to kick some ass!"

The exiles cheered.

The group all crowded in closer as the door was opened. This wasn't the first time that they had tried to get free of this place, but those times it had been one or perhaps two exile trying to barge through a door that an assassin had just come through. Needless to say, those particular prisoners didn't live long enough to get the freedom they had been lucky enough to glimpse.

Quickly and quietly, they walked into the chateaux dungeon. "This way," Stef said as she ran along the dark corridor, heading toward the Keymaker's cell.

"How do you know the way?" Scai asked as he slithered along the wall beside her.

"I just know ok? You trust me or not?"

"We've been prisoners a long time. Agents and exiles..."

"Brown," Stef said and the group stopped moving. "You lot know Agent Brown?"

As one, the group nodded. "Well," she said, "if I don't get Smith back Brown is going to be in charge. Do you seriously want to live in a world where he's in charge of an agency?"

"Brown and Carlson," Joshua muttered, "are both bastards. It's Carlson's fault I was in hell."

An exile with red tubular - almost snake-tail-like - hair sneered down at her. "What if Smith has an accident before he gets out? Brown is a problem, but Smith is well...Smith, you know what I mean."

"If you, _any of you_, lay a finger on him I will kill you." She looked at the group, "I don't usually do this, but I'm going to be petty for once in my life. All of you owe me, I could left you in hell to rot or die, so all of you owe big time."

She turned from the group and continued toward the Keymaker's cell. Since she didn't have a physical key to the cell - of which there was only one - she turned to the wall and banged her fist against it. A panel popped open and she entered an access code, hoping that it would work.

It was an old access code, but the codes of the high security cells were all the same, so if it worked it was going to be good - she wouldn't have a problem, but if it was different from what she remembered, she was in deep trouble. She smiled as the light flashed green and the door unlocked. She pulled it open, noticing that the group of exiles was once again behind her.

The Keymaker looked up in surprise as Stef, Joshua and Scai walked in, the rest of the group had to wait outside. The little old program looked scared, "no, I can't, he'll kill me if I give you keys."

"You're not going to give them, we're going to steal them."

The exiles and agent nodded. The Keymaker looked up at Joshua, "could you please render me unconscious?" Joshua nodded, and put one hand behind the program's head and punched him with the other.

Scai looked at the walls of keys, "which ones?"

Stef scanned them, "that wall," she said as she pointed, "pass them out, quickly."

The bear and the reptile started to pass the keys out. Stef walked around the room, looking for something special. Finally, she looked down at the Keymaker. There was a chain around his neck, she slipped it off and scanned the key.

It was what she wanted, a Master Key. A key to every door in the chateaux - in and out. She quickly pulled it over her neck and slipped it under her shirt, not wanting the exiles to get jealous, but she needed it more than they did.

"That's everyone," Joshua announced.

"Good," she said, "now get everyone out of here." Most of the exiles didn't need a second invitation and ran for it. Scai and Joshua remained through, "I said get out of here," she said firmly, "you don't get too many chances to get out of this place alive."

Slowly, and which a nod, they left. She stood there for a moment, then took a deep breath and ran out to find Smith.


	15. A Conversation

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Fifteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **2125

**Notes:** Nope

**Please read and Review.**

Stef ran down the hall, and then stopped at part of the wall. She banged on it, and the brickwork slid along to reveal a vault with a keypad attached, she typed in a code and it popped open.

She pulled out her gun and attached a silencer from the vault, and pocketed the extra clips and one miniscule bomb about the size of a large marble that she was pretty sure exploded on impact and then continued down the hall.

"Smith?" Stef called as loud as she dared, not wanting to attract any of the guards, "damn it, where the hell are you?"

"He would be on the bottom dungeon level," a cultured voice called through the small, barred hole in one of the cells as she ran past it.

Stef's eyes went wide and she ran back over to the cell, standing on her tiptoes so that she could see through the hole she stared at he occupant. "Persephone?" she asked disbelief. "What the...? What are you doing down here?"

She gave a humorless chuckle and walked over to the door, "I've been a bad girl," she said in a sarcastic tone, "my husband sent me down here for the day to think about what I did wrong."

"Stand back," Stef said and shot the hinges of the heavy door. Thanks to the silencer, no one was the wiser. She pulled the door away and held out her hand to help the other program across the felled door.

"Thank you," the older lady said quietly.

"What did you do? Or what does he think you did?"

"He caught me talking in my sleep about another man." She closed her eyes, "a man better than he could ever be," she whispered.

"Divorce him, for your own sake, divorce him."

"You've said that many times," Perse said quietly.

_Not in this timeline_, Stef thought to herself. "No I haven't."

"I'm empathic, I not so much read your mind as sense what you're sending off. The first time I saw you, I saw someone who had tried to understand me, I did not know how that was possible, but I just know it is. I saw someone who was sad for me, you have no idea who glad that made me. That someone actually took notice of me."

"So why don't you just take off with this other man of yours?"

"Because I do not wish to be a monster again," she said quietly.

"A monster?"

"I am from the first world, Vorateu's world. But when we came here, we were changed, we became monsters. Some accepted this, most had to learn to accept it. I was a vampire, I had to drink blood to survive, but I cried after every life I took so that I could survive."

"What's this got to do with the royal jerk?"

"He changed me back to this, back to who I was before coming to this world. He allowed me to be free of the monster I had become. But after we married, he told me that if I ever divorced him or left him, he would change me back. I could not live like that again, no matter how much I despise this life I have no. It is the lessor of two evils."

"I'm sorry Perse, I never knew."

"You need to go help Smith before its too late. If it isn't already."

"Are you going to be all right?"

"I will be fine, I can look after myself." Stef nodded and ran toward the stairs to the lower basement level.

In his cell, Smith was contemplating a great number of things, high on his list was what the Mainframe was going to do once it found out what he had done. Even if he didn't tell it, it would find out soon enough after The Merovingian hacked ever agent on the planet.

He heard someone outside his cell and looked up, a head bobbed into view. "You're a hard man to get a hold of, you know that? Could have at least left a forwarding address," Stef said, he assumed with smile, but all he could see was her eyes and forehead.

"How did you get here?" Smith asked, not bothering to get up from the floor.

"I don't think that's important right now, but we have to get out of here before the evil French guy finds us."

"Stef...I'm an idiot, I'm such a fool," he said, saying out loud what he had been thinking ever since the deception had been revealed.

"That I know," she said as she stared through the bars at him. "You're also a jerk."

He shook his head shamefully, "I made a choice, I choice I regret, a wrong choice."

"Which choice are you regretting Smith?" she asked him quietly as she leant against the cell door.

"I regret it in hindsight, I didn't regret it at the time. Choosing Ivy over you I mean."

"Only in hindsight?"

"I loved her Stef, I loved her. I chose her, I don't regret that."

"So why then in hindsight?"

"Because she wasn't my Ivy, it was a shapeshifter who had changed to look like her. Ivy really is dead, but I wanted so much to have another chance with her that I took The Merovingian's bait like a blind fish. I thought I had really been given a second chance, I couldn't let anyone stand in the way."

"And if Stevie had been there, who would you have chosen?"

There was a moment of silence, "I would have chosen Stevie."

"...I'm on the bottom of the list."

He walked over to the bars and looked out at her. "Stef, I love you, but if you had lived ten years thinking Darth was dead, wouldn't you give anything for a second chance with him? To say everything you didn't say before? To do everything that you didn't before, to want to make the moment last forever in case it was a dream?" He paused, "I could never replace you but I wanted so badly just to..."

"I understand. I do. I'm just pissed off all a whole bunch of people so I'm taking some things out of proportion." She smirked to herself, she hadn't actually said who she was pissed at, or what she was taking out of proportion, and it seemed to work.

"We can talk about it later, but are you going to get me out of this cell?"

"Hmm...I'll have to think about it."

"Stef..."

"Don't get mad at me or I'll leave you here. I'm sure that Mero will love to rip your coding apart."

"...he doesn't need to, I hacked through all of the security myself."

"And you did that why? You're going to get deleted for that."

"Because he threatened to let Carlson kill Ivy, and then let the wolves finish her off. I wasn't going to standby and let the exiles kill her a second time."

"Second time?" she asked she pulled off the lock and opened the door.

"Yes," he said. "It was The Merovingian who killed her, well not he specifically, but he ordered her death. It seems that all I ever bring to the ones I love is death. He had her killed just because she loved me. I am like a specter of death.""

"I'm sorry. I really am Smith."

Then she punched him in the face.

"What was that for?" he asked as he blocked a second punch.

"What the fuck do you think it was for?" she screamed as she delivered a second solid blow, "you left me in hell to die!"

"Stef..."

"And it's only in hindsight that you regret it?" she raged, "so if Ivy had of really been Ivy you wouldn't have given me a second thought?"

"I had to choose one of you. I chose."

"You chose wrong Smith. You chose very wrongly."

"You know would have done the same thing."

"You should have picked me. I would have helped you get her out of there, the same way I got into there in the first place. I could have helped you, don't you know that?"

"I guess I wasn't thinking properly."

"I don't think I can accept just that. I don't think I can forgive you this time."

"So why are you rescuing me?" he asked smugly.

"Because we are agents of the system, even if you aren't acting like one, that's the only reason Agent Smith. And I don't want to have to serve with a copy, you would let that happen, but I wouldn't."

"I wou..."

"Trust me," she said coldly, "you would."

"And you act like a system program all the time?" he asked pointedly. "What about Darth?"

"That was low," she said angrily. "That was so low."

"Well?" he asked, "what do you have to say to that?"

"I'm twenty-three, I'm supposed to be alive, I'm supposed to be human, I'm not supposed to be an immortal fighting a war. I understand Carol, at least partly, no human can become an agent without it affecting them on a deep level. I'm doing this and I don't even know what to do half the time. I look at the recruits, and sometimes I wish I could be one of them, at least they have the choice to go home, I can't ever do that. Why didn't you just let me die?"

He just stared at her.

"You never even gave me a choice! You decided this for me! This is what I have to be forever, and it's your fault."

"This isn't what you've said before."

"Yeah, but this is what I think about sometimes in the middle of the night, when I just wish I could be normal."

"You don't have that option."

"We don't have time for this," she said bitterly. "We have to get out of here."

"Which way is the exit?"

"I don't know."

"Then how did you get in? surely the entrance and exit are the same."

"That's flawed logic Agent Smith," Stef said as she angrily rolled her eyes. "There are a lot places where the entrance and exit are different."

"How did you get in here?"

"I came from the same place you came from, except a different way. The problem is, if we go back my way, we will just be back in the bowels of hell, which isn't an error shunt, but a programmed room tacked onto this place."

"How did you find that out?"

"Remember in that place, you could sometimes see people walking around? Well, they're exiles, Mero's prisoners, and that place was just a hunting ground."

"So you got what information you could out of them before killing them?"

"No." She stared coldly at him, this was going to take some delicate working and choice phrasing.

"Agent Mimosa, our job is to kill exiles."

"Agent Smith, do quit being a narc. My top priority is to get you out of here in one piece - even if I hate that piece. And if that involved tricking some traitorous ex-system programs, then so be it."

"But they..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, defied the system, I know that. Exile is the coward's choice, blah, blah. We've both defied the system, we both keep defying the system. What the he...what makes you or me different from an exile who's only crime is wanting to live?"

"The fact that you seem to be taking this rather personally does make me a little suspicious..."

"Yeah, it's just for today, one of them stopped me from becoming vamp food."

"Why?"

"Because he saw an unconscious program and didn't bother to check to see if she was agent or exile."

"That could have and should have been a fatal mistake."

"It almost seems to be that you didn't want to be rescued."

"I don't want someone I care about becoming a traitor or gaining sympathy for the enemy."

"Smith...just so that you know...not everything is black and white, not everything exists only in the extremes that you seem to take everything to. Just because I had to go and form a temporary 'I won't kill you if you help me' accord with them doesn't mean that I'm going to..."

"Perhaps we can finish this when we get out of here?"

"I'm not a traitor Smith, I'm really not."

"I know Stef, but it's written into me at a base level to be suspicious of anything that could be considered a traitorous statement."

"Well it's probably a good thing that I didn't say something like 'the Oracle is a nice old lady who insists on giving me cookies.'"

"Ha ha," he replied dryly as they ran down the corridor.


	16. Dangerous Brilliance

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Sixteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1292

**Notes:** does an evil dance

**Please read and Review.**

"So where is the room?" Stef asked him as they ran down the dungeon corridor.

"Which room?" Smith asked her.

"Duh Smith, the room where you hacked your own security."

"That's not important, we have to get out of here."

"No, we have to delete it."

"No."

"Do you want to get deleted? That's what they'll do to you."

"I deserve it."

"I don't give a damn Smith, all of the agents have been compromised because of your stupidity. We need to correct this mistake."

Smith shoved her against the wall, "don't you dare talk to me like that!"

She stared up at him, "fine, the gloves are off." She ran toward him and jumped, kicking him in the head and then knocking him to the ground. She beat her punched him again and again until she felt blood on her fingers.

She stood up and wiped her hands on her suit, "I thought I knew you. Find your own way out of here, we're done."

She walked away from him, and off to find the room.

Smith sat up, and watched her disappear from view.

Rounding a corner, she saw Mero and Carlson walking toward an open door. She froze and then ran quickly into the room, slamming the door shut and pulling the heavy bar across.

There was only one computer in the room, she could hear Carlson kicking at the door, trying to get through, she didn't have time to get through all of the security so she concentrated for a moment and then drove her hands into the computer.

It was a crude and temporary bridge, but it was enough to enable her to transfer all of the data across from the computer into her code. Downloading gigabytes every second, her coding started to burn when she started transferring the security hacks.

Whimpering in pain as her code burned, she finished transferring it off and then slumped to the floor as Carlson kicked the door in. He ran over and flung her away from the computer desk, he placed a heavy boot on her chest and aimed his gun down at her.

"I can hear your heart beating from here," Carlson whispered. "You're afraid of me."

_Well, of course I'm afraid..._

"Then shoot me, if that's what you're going to." There was no sense in beating around the bush, she wasn't going to get out of there, and she couldn't even reach for her gun without them noticing.

_I don't want to die... _

"Aren't you even going to beg?" Carlson asked her with a sneer.

_I really don't... _

Stef's head rolled back, she didn't have the energy to fight anymore.

_Do I? _

Carlson took the safety off and she squeezed her eyes shut.

_No. _

"No," another voice said.

Carlson's head snapped to the side, "boss?"

The Merovingian pointed to the door, "leave."

Carlson stared down at the agent and then back to his boss, "well, if you say so." He put the gun on the desk as he walked out, "it's loaded."

Mero knelt down beside her and slipped his hand into her suit, then pulled out her gun and placed it just out of her reach. She turned onto her side and tried to reach it anyway, knowing it was useless. He pulled her hand away from it.

"Is it painful?" he asked, "being hacked from the inside?"

Through the pain, she glared up at him.

"I would imagine," he said softly, "that it feels something like deletion. You know, if you got up right now and went back to your Agency, that is all that awaits you? Probably not straight away, but in the future, they will delete you and you will just be another exile."

"Deletion hurts," she mumbled.

"So why go back there?" he asked, "just stay here, once the hacking finishes, I can cut your system ties and you'll be an exile like Carlson."

"Exile..."

"With whatever coherent thought you can gather, think about why you would want to go back, think about that conversation you had with Smith."

"How'd you know?"

"Hidden cameras my girl, what can the system possibly offer you that the exile world can't?"

"But you're a jerk, pervert, asshole..."

"And the man who left you to die in my playground isn't?" He extended a hand, "come on Mimosa, the kingdom of the exiles is waiting for you. Anyone as smart as you deserves a second chance."

"No," she whispered.

"Why?"

"I'm an agent."

"So was Carlson, but being an exile is so much better."

"Burn in hell."

"I don't burn in hell, I run it. Don't fear what you can control."

"Do you fear me?"

"I would prefer it if you worked for me. You're dangerously brilliant. The playground has been home and grave to hundreds of exiles, of mine, of Vorateu's, of all the others, from all parts of the globe. And out of all of them, you are the only one who managed to figure out how to get in through the doors. I really don't think the system acknowledges your intelligence."

She smiled weakly.

"That's more like it, now, what do you say?"

"If..."

He nodded expectantly, "conditions, of course, well, what are they?"

"Good pay."

"Not a problem."

"Room, weapons."

"Standard."

"I kill Smith."

The Merovingian smiled in victory, "so be it. Would you like to get up off the floor?"

She nodded slowly and he helped her up. He guided her to the same chair he had restrained Smith in.

"Better not be trick," she mumbled.

"Trust me Mimosa, it's not, and your system problems and days are over."

"Still hurts."

"Perhaps I can do something about that as well," he said as he retrieved a small bottle of wine out of the secret compartment.

"What is that?"

"It temporarily numbs your pain subroutines, I don't make much of it as too much and you are left permanently numb."

"Ok," she mumbled and he poured her a glass.

She tentatively drank a little and then smiled as the pain subsided, "shouldn't we drink to something?" she asked sarcastically.

"To what?" he asked as he poured himself a glass of normal wine.

Stef smirked, and raised her glass, "to my boss."

He touched his glass to hers, "I'll drink to that." He looked at the door, "you can come back in Carlson," he called.

Carlson flung open the door, an MP5 in his hand. He took a step in and froze, "what is going on?" he asked as he watched Stef drain her wineglass.

"Meet my newest employee."

"Employee?" Carlson said as he raised his eyebrows. "Ah, I was about to put a bullet in her brain two minutes ago..."

Stef smirked humorlessly, "I finally got the incentive I needed to go exile. Oh, do I get vacations?"

The Merovingian gave her a strange look, "of course."

"Cool."

"Ah, no way," Carlson said, "this is a trick."

"The one thing that was tying me to the system is going to be dead in about an hour, exile is a good choice."

"I'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Whatever." She looked up at Mero, "so what now?"

The Merovingian thought for a second, "the security hacks should take about an hour, in that time you can pick out some new weapons and Carlson can show you to a room."

"Please tell me your dog comes with a collar."

Carlson growled.

"Oh down puppy, I'm on your side now you jerk. Weren't you the one who said you were nothing like Brown? So prove it."

"I don't trust you."

"And you think I trust you? We're going to have to learn to get along though."

"Unlikely," he said as they walked out of the room.


	17. Chess

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Seventeen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1476

**Please read and Review.**

"I'll take you to one of the temp's rooms. Boss can fix your room later."

"Think I can get something brought up from the restaurant?" she asked then grabbed the wall. The hacking was messing with her equilibrium.

"I'm not a waiter, use the phone."

"Still extension 107?"

"How could you possibly know that?" he asked as she experimentally pushed herself off the wall and started walking again.

"You will find that I know a lot more than I should."

"What do you really want?"

"High class mansion, holiday house in the Caribbean and a private jet. You?"

"I already live in a mansion, don't need to fly and I have a place in the Bahamas."

Stef laughed, "so Brown really is the evil twin, you're just a jerk."

"Only to people I don't like."

"Are we talking like civilized people?"

"No."

She smirked, "didn't think so."

Carlson pointed to the door, "your room for the moment."

"Thanks," she said as she walked in and closed the door. Picking up the phone she dialed 107 and waited for an answer.

"Le Vrai, an order to the chateaux?" the accented voice asked.

"Yes please. Coke, fries, three of those big chocolate cookies and...make it two cokes."

"All right," the voice said, not used to such a commonplace order. "Ten minutes."

"Merci," Stef said and hung up the phone. She walked to the window and looked out to the mountains. It really was a nice view...

She sat on the window seat and peeled off her jacket and tie, she didn't believe that she hadn't managed to lose them yet. The Master Key was still wrapped around her neck, she wasn't quite ready to give that up, she probably wouldn't ever be, it was too much of an advantage.

Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, "come in."

Carlson pushed open the door, carrying a tray. "I thought you weren't a waiter," she remarked sarcastically.

"The delivery guy didn't know where to take it."

She walked over and looked at the tray, "I hate you," she said sardonically.

"Me?" he asked innocently.

"Strychnine in one of my cokes, cyanide on one of my cookies and arsenic on one of the others. Great, just great, now I have less caffeine and sugar than what I wanted."

"How'd you know?"

"Before I eat or drink anything in this place I scan it, too many bad rumors and truths."

"Boss wants to know how long till the hacking finishes. He's about ready to call out the vamps to get rid of Smith."

"Give me twenty minutes, it's almost done, it's not fun you know."

"Neither is having half of you program get destroyed while you're in the Matrix, believe me, I know about pain."

"I look at you and I see Brown, I see an exile, but I don't see an agent."

"No matter what crap the system says, it's just a job, a job finishes sooner or later, or they fire you rather permanently. If they wanted automatons they should have used constructs and not AI. The Mainframe is separate to Machine City, I wouldn't mind living in Machine City, they live under a whole different set of rules out there..." Carlson cut himself off and went back to his angry and steely expression.

Stef was quiet, this definitely wasn't how she had expected her day to go, "you aren't the person I thought you were."

He smirked, "don't tell anyone."

She nodded and ate a chip and watched silently as he walked out. She shook herself when the door closed, that had been freakish. Carlson was a jerk, Carlson was a killer, Carlson was a traitor, Carlson was an exile, Carlson deserved to die.

Carlson was just a person. Just another program.

He'd been manipulated beyond his will into inadvertently starting the war. He had helped the first one. He was a variant copy of Brown. He had been rebel before he had been exile.

And every word the exiles had said about the system was true.

She had been intending this to be a charade, just a trick, just something to ensure they got out of there in one piece, and that she could get the copy of the security hacks she know that the Merovingian had put onto a flash disk - the information on the computer had told her that.

But it didn't seem like that anymore.

She picked up the coke and went back to the window seat. She was scared that she was thinking like this. She was considering not going back to the Agency. Part of her wanted to stay exile, to stay free. At least Mero wouldn't have her executed if he found out that she had a boyfriend...with his sources, there was a chance he already knew.

The last time she had been exile...which no one except Jonas, Carol and a world of fanboys knew about...all she had wanted was to go home, to go back to the only place she felt she belonged, to go back to the Agency, to the system and to Smith.

The system would delete her at a drop of a hat, the only things she would miss about the Agency were Jones and Greer and as for Smith...

She really didn't want to think about him at the moment, but unfortunately she didn't have a choice, there were never enough choices, and most of the time, the right choices to make were the hardest ones of all.

Agent, exile, human, whichever one of these she chose to be right now was going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. For the exiles, the agents and the humans...well at least the rebels.

She felt her hands go slick as the moisture from the glass of coke wet the blood...Smith's blood...that was on her hands.

She wanted to hit him, she wanted to hurt him, she wanted him to feel so much pain that he wished he was dead. To pay him back for almost beating her to death with his bare hands, for breaking her ribs and making her too afraid to scream. A small, dark memory that was forever burned into her mind. Even so, she didn't think she could bring herself to kill him - at least, she didn't think she would - after all, she wasn't Whitman.

At least, she wasn't the Whitman who murdered people. Carol, pity her corrupted soul, hadn't wanted to go insane, hadn't wanted to murder people in the way that she did, Jonas had made her do all of that. The damn and damned bastard man who believed himself to be a god.

At the moment, she really didn't know what she wanted to do.

Leaning against the window, she saw an angel flying in a carefree pattern, dipping and twirling, falling toward the ground before catching itself. The freedom of someone without the weight of the world wasn't on their shoulders.

This wasn't a game, she knew that. She knew that all too well. She wasn't a game in the sense that she could throw a fit and go home, but it was a game - chess. People placing their pieces on the board, sacrificing players for their goal, tricking their opponent, all with their eyes on the goal. Check, then checkmate.

Checkmate. Victory. Besting your opposition.

Stef Mimosa wasn't even sure that she knew who the enemy was anymore.

The agents and the system who had made her who she was, but would ultimately get rid of her for being at least some part human. Or the exiles, whose major crime was as simple as wanting to live. That was no crime, that was the prime directive or any sentient being.

Life was a game of chess, and she wasn't sure which piece she was, or even which side she was playing, playing for, or being played by.

"Hey universe," she muttered, "give me a break. I'm too young to deal with all of this shit."

The Merovingian was dangerous, no matter what side you were on, she hadn't forgotten that. He was cold, calculating, cunning, a perverted intelligence that used everyone and everything around him for his own advantage and gain. A man who, if trifled with, would cut off an angel's wings as punishment.

A man who could find his way out of a checkmate by luring his opponent into it.

A program who respected her intelligence, but also used it to her disadvantage. Who manipulated circumstances so that the pieces would fall exactly where he wanted.

Was she falling where he wanted to? Or was she acting on her own? Was there anyway to tell?

In about twenty minutes, she was going to have to make a choice. And one way or another, everything was going to change.


	18. Hatred

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Eighteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **836

**Notes:** Sorry for another short one. I guarantee the ending of this chapter makes up for it's shortness.

**Please read and Review.**

Seventeen minutes later, there was a knock at the door, she got up and opened it. The Twins and Carlson were there. One held up a case and opened it, sitting in specially-cut foam was a new Desert Eagle, polished to perfection, with a clip sitting beside it.

She pulled out the gun and slammed the clip into it, with a smirk, they silently walked down the hall.

The Merovingian was waiting at the top of the stairs, "so where is he? 


	19. The meaning of family

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Nineteen

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1831

**Please read and Review.**

The bullet slammed into the wall beside him, but it had been so close that the flesh on his cheek was grazed and burnt.

He fell backward as the panel to the secret stair opened.

He ran up the stairs.

"I was so fucking close!" he heard her yell. "How the fuck could I miss? He so gets a slow death now!"

Smith bounded up the stairs, knowing death was just behind him. He burst through the door at the other end of the stairs and found himself in the grand entranceway, or at least he assumed so by it's imposing nature.

He turned back toward the stair and watched as Stef ran out. He took a couple of steps back and then waited for her next move. There was no way out, and he deserved whatever happened, so he wasn't going to try and run anymore.

Carlson was just behind her, and Mero was behind him, the Frenchman never ran for anything.

Smith stared as the Desert Eagle was raised against him, he'd never expected that the standard agent weapon would be used to end an agent's life. It was a little too ironic.

Mero walked up beside her, the side of his coat just brushing her left arm, "what are you waiting for?"

"For you to catch your breath boss, so you can enjoy this."

"How considerate."

"I'm quite nice once you get to know me." She turned from Smith and ran her hand down the sleeve, feeling the texture, "I love the coat boss, think I can get one?"

"We shall discuss your wardrobe when you finish Smith."

"But I want to take my time," she said with a smile, "cause him all of the pain he caused me."

She slipped a hand into his pocket, "oh, it's silk lined."

"I will have nothing but the best."

"For the world's best trafficker of information, you deserve nothing less than the finest quality in everything." She removed her hand from his pocket and sighed. "Well, I guess I can finish with him a little quicker than I had anticipated, we all have lives to get on with."

Stef chuckled and aimed her gun at him, "back up, against that wall. This is an execution, and I'm going to do it in the traditional way."

Smith raised his arms and started to back up, "at least tell me that this is you doing this, or if they've corrupted you, tell me that at least."

"This is me, and I know exactly what I'm doing, Agent Smith."

"You've become the enemy." And it was his fault.

"Save it. I've had it with you."

He was now backed up against the wall. He stared down at her is disbelief. "Now," she whispered, "it's time for you to fall...."

She moved in close and pressed the gun to his head with one hand and pushed her key into the lock with the other. "...Angel Smith."

In one swift move, she turned the lock and the handle, then spun and shot a few shots wildly toward but not at the exiles and then turned and pushed Smith through the door. Slamming it behind them, she shot out the hinges and somewhat relaxed.

Smith breathed a sigh of relief, "for a while there, I thought..."

She aimed the gun back up at him, "what did you think that you aren't thinking now?"

Unafraid, he pushed the gun arm away and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She tried to push him away, but after a moment she dropped her gun and hugged him back, before resting her head on his chest and sobbing.

"I hate you!" she screamed through her tears.

"I know," he said as tears fell down his cheeks. "I know." He let her go, "don't forgive me, I've caused you nothing but pain, and my actions in the last few days have been utterly unforgivable." He hung his head, "I won't blame you if you walk away the Agency and go back to the exiles, they seemed to understand you better than I ever have. At least with them you won't...at least with them you'll be able to have some semblance of the life I stole from you."

"I would be dead anyway, power plant body was screwed up remember? So you didn't steal anything."

"I stole your life from you when you were two. If I had wiped your memories like I should have, you wouldn't have been plagued by questions and curiosity your whole life, you wouldn't have looked, you would have been normal."

"Normal people suck."

"Go Stef, this will be your only chance to get away from me."

"What makes you think I want to get away from you?" she asked as she wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.

"But..."

"I still hate you for leaving me in hell and for choosing Ivy over me, but I understand why you did it. I really do. I hate you for what you said to me outside your cell, you're a jerk for giving into Mero and giving up your security hacks, Jones is going to have to go over me with a fine tooth comb my code is so screwed up thanks to that, but we're family Smith."

"Family?"

"Yeah, family. No matter how much we hate them sometimes, the ones we love, our family, are the ones we would die for and the ones we would do anything for. That's why after all this, I can't walk away from you."

"I..."

"It's going to take a while, but I think we're going to be ok? Don't you? We love people for their flaws and we have so many of those I'll think we'll be stuck with each other for a very long time."

Smith smiled, "let's go home."

They began walking down the alley, "one question," he said, "what were you doing to The Merovingian?"

She pulled a flash disk from her pocket and waved it in front of his face, "he had a copy of the hacks on this, I knew everything that computer did so I knew about it. If I hadn't got it back it would have all been for nothing."

"Oh, ok."

She smirked and crushed the disk under the heel of her shoe.

Smith and Stef walked through the doors of Agency, and the guards just stared. Both of the normally immaculately-dressed agents weren't in anywhere near full uniform and what they were wearing of it was dirty, dusty, muddy or covered in blood. The agents stared at them and they didn't ask any questions.

They took the elevator up to Jones' lab. The tech agent was slowly tapping at the keys of his laptop, doing work, but very slowly, as if he didn't want to do what he was doing.

"Jones..." Smith said to alert him to their presence, as he hadn't seemed to notice them coming in. the slightly built agent swiveled in his chair and his green eyes lit up as he looked at them.

"I'm so glad to see both of you," he said with a smile. "Are you all right?"

"We're fine," Smith said with a nod.

"I need a damn vacation," Stef said as she sat down on the slab in front of Jones.

"Well if you're alright, perhaps we should inform Clarke..." Jones suggested.

"I will do that," Smith said as he concentrated for a moment and required back his suit and shifted away. Despite the virus, he was still connected to the system.

"Well, I guess I can get rid of that," Jones said as he pointed to empty Smith shell on a slab in the corner of the lab.

"Please do, it's creepy."

Jones nodded and the empty avatar disappeared.

"Where's Agent Dirt?" she asked Jones. "I need to give him a violent piece of my mind," she sighed, "Jones, is there a move in VWS where you can like rip out his liver or burn him at the stake or something? That sounds like real fun right about now..."

He looked up at her, "no, I didn't design it with that kind of violence in mind. And Brown is..." he said and then trailed off to an unintelligible mumble.

"I don't like the way you trailed off, where is he?"

"He is in the Mainframe, being debriefed and sub-scanned."

"English please Jones, I have had the longest couple of days."

"He is being debriefed for not requesting permission from the Mainframe before making a deal with the exiles, and a sub-scan is where every one of a program's subroutines is checked for errors."

"Great...now he's going to hate me even more. He didn't make the trade to get Smith back, he made it to get rid of me."

"I assumed as much, but at least he will be gone for seventy-two hours."

"I think that's the first good news I've had all week."

"You look very tired."

"I think I'm going to..." She looked up when someone cleared his throat at the door. She looked up and saw Smith, "if you say we have to talk to Clarke, I am going to kill you. For real this time."

"It won't take long."

"I am not coherent enough to talk to him, I need..." Smith gave her a Look. "I need to get my suit on and talk to the most boring program in existence?"

"Precisely."

"Oh...joy of all joys..."

Three hours, twenty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds later Clarke was finally finished with his questioning and was satisfied with their report.

"Now can I take off?" Stef asked Smith as they walked back toward his office.

"Don't you think you should stick around for a while?" he asked as he opened the door. "Considering what just happened?"

"Considering what just happened, I need a shower, I need to go to sleep, I need to relax. I need to tell your little girl that you're fine. I need to tell my boyfriend I'm alive."

"No, it's not a good idea. Especially not after you admitted to temporarily siding with the exiles. Even if you didn't tell him quite everything."

"If Clarke could accept my reasoning then what's the problem?"

He sighed, "it's because you were human."

"I don't understand..."

"Out of all the agents you are seen to be the one who the exiles would most accept a change of sides from. You chose to be loyal to mainframe, something that could change if you changed your mind."

"So you're saying that after complete loyalty it still thinks I can go off on a whim and betray everything?"

"No, just that you are more likely to."

"Great. Just great."

"This is not my doing."

"Well, you know something Smith? I've really thought about it and you know what? I quit."

He stared at her for a full minute. "What?" he finally asked.

"I said I quit."

"Stef?"

"I quit."


	20. Home again?

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Twenty

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1644

**Please read and Review.**

"...you can't be serious..."

Stef laughed and dropped down in the chair in front of his desk, "no, of course I'm not. I just always wanted to see what your face would look like if I ever said that. And I was right, it was priceless." _I really thought about it though, but I can't tell you that. Just like all those other things I can't tell you about. _

"Do me a favor and never say something like that again."

She crossed her heart but had her fingers crossed behind her back - just in case - "I swear."

"I am not amused."

"Too bad, I liked it."

"Did you get corrupted by the exiles?" he asked with a wry smile.

"No where near as much as you did Smithy." His face, and she slapped herself, "I'm sorry, that was way out of line."

"You can go if you want."

"No, I think I'm going to stick around for a while."

"Around where?" he asked as he opened the bottom drawer and looked in at the hourglass Whitman had given him.

"Around here, around the Agency. But I think I'm going to go to my office and have a nap."

"If you want."

"And maybe later you can tell me about the real Ivy, she must have been pretty special."

"Yes," Smith said as Stef got up and walked to the door, "very special."

Figuring that six hours was enough time to have stuck around the Agency, Stef shifted to the collaborator mansion. Jones had restored her security and asked her nicely to not let her code be affected in the next week, as it could only sustain so much damage in a short amount of time.

She shifted up to Stevie's room and knocked on the door. Stevie opened it a second later.

"Your dad is fine."

Stevie squeaked in joy, "so he's all right? He's really ok?"

"Yeah Steves, he's fine. He's coming by later."

"You promise?"

"I swear."

Stevie narrowed her eyes, "show me your hands."

"Huh?"

"Hold up both of your hands and swear, cause if you're anything like me, you'll have your fingers crossed just in case."

Stef held up her hands, "I swear he's ok and that's he's coming over later. And I only cross my fingers when I'm unsure about something." Stevie smiled and nodded.

"You know where Darth is?"

"I heard him walk down the stairs muttering about doughnuts."

Stef watched silently as Darth opened the cupboard and then the breadbox before sighing. _Screw the Agency, I want to go exile, get a lame house with a white picket fence and spend my life with him. _

The programmer, having not noticed her yet, opened the freezer and rummaged around.

_I could have died, I thought I was never going to see him again. I love him so much._

"Yay!" Darth said as he closed the freezer and held up an old, icy ice cream bar.

"Hey."

He looked up at her, dropped the ice cream and walked over to her. "Where have you been?" he asked her as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Stop talking," she said as she kissed him.

When he was about to turn blue from oxygen deprivation, she broke away and buried her head in his chest.

He rubbed his hand on her back in soothing circles, "are you all right?" he whispered.

She laughed into his chest, "I suppose," she looked up at him, "so, anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

"You're not all right, what happened?"

"A few things, but one highest on my list is that, for a time, I didn't think I was ever going to see you again. I was so scared that you wouldn't know how much I really loved you."

"Believe me," he said as he kissed her, "I know."

"Oh, puke," Niq said as she walked into the kitchen. "There's a certain hope a person can live in until they see the disgusting truth for themselves. And my hope had just been shattered."

"Shove it," Stef said as she let of Darth and glared at Niq.

"Is that what you say to him?" Niq asked as she jerked her head toward Darth, "or are you just a tease?"

"I thought I made everything clear," Darth said as he walked over to her. "There is nothing between us, there never has been, so just drop it."

"Are you willing to get shunned by the rest of the crew, for her?"

"Not everyone in the crew disapproves of us. Take a lesson from them."

"Who else approves of this unnatural...whatever it is? And did you tell her what we did the other night?"

Darth looked at Stef, "before this gets out of hand, shift us somewhere, anywhere, now." She shrugged and they disappeared.

Darth looked around, "ok, where are we?"

"My apartment. Open the curtains please." She held her nose as she walked toward the kitchen, "I have to stop leaving food in the fridge." She required it away, "much better."

Dropping down onto the couch she looked over at him, "feel like telling me what you two did the other night?"

"I have no problem telling you, but promise not to shoot me before I finish talking."

"Did you guys...?" she started to ask, feeling dread rising from the pit of her stomach.

"Niq tried to seduce me. Or rather, she skipped the seduce part and..."

"She...she what? Did you...you know?"

"No, of course I didn't, I'm not like that. I would never cheat on you."

"Did you want to?" she asked in a whisper.

"What?" he asked as he sat down beside her.

"Did you want to spend the night with her?"

"No." he said firmly. "I did not."

"Then why did she try something like that? You guys lived on that ship for so long, so why now?"

"You got a minute for me to explain?"

"I'm immortal, trust me, I have the time."

"She has been living under the impression that one night, years ago, when she was drunk, we did what she was trying to the other night. I've told her a hundred times that nothing happened, but she doesn't believe me."

"Ok."

"And Ryder told her what's going on with us and she was going on about how programs would never be as good as humans and that I didn't need you if I could have her instead."

"What did you say to her?"

"A couple of things, then I spent the night at Stonehenge."

"They didn't mind?"

"Nah, it was a lock-in session and the couch was free. I've done it before."

"I guess I'm kind of ruining your life aren't I?"

"Stef, if being with you is ruining my life, then I want my world to crumble into ashes."

"Isn't that a little over-dramatic?" she asked with a mocking smile.

"I mean it. I don't care what Ryder or the rest of the crew thinks. This is my choice."

"At least Stevie and Cray are on our side."

"Galli is too."

"Your operator? Are you serious."

"Completely, he's thankful that I'm spending time with something besides a computer."

"But I'm..."

"He means something that has a CD-ROM drive, USB ports, a keyboard and a mouse. He likes the idea that I'm spending time with something that isn't unfeeling hardware. You're software," he put his hand on her cheek, "really soft, software."

She put an arm around his neck and pulled him close, "and also lumpy."

"Soft and lumpy..." he said in between kisses as he leant down and wrapped his arms around her, "on you, it's a good combination." He leant up on one arm and pulled her tie off, then, after a second's hesitation, he started to undo her shirt buttons.

"My turn," she said as she reached down and pulled his shirt up over his head.

Then the phone rang.

"Of all the times to get a wrong number," she said with a heavy sigh.

It kept ringing.

"It could be important," he said as he slowly sat up.

"No one calls me here, no one ever did call me here. And most of the world that never knew I existed thinks I'm dead."

But it still kept ringing.

"It seems quite persistent, maybe it isn't a wrong number. I think you should answer it."

She shrugged and shifted the phone over to her, she picked it up, "hello?" A look of confusion crossed her face as she handed it to Darth, "it's for you."

"Hello?" he asked as he put the phone to his ear.

"It's me," Galli said. "A couple of things, firstly, you may want to firewall or scramble the code of the place you're in if you want some um...private time..."

Darth blushed bright red, "you were watching?"

"No, I was trying to find where you were. You're lucky the captain didn't see that or he may have had a coronary, then come after you with extreme prejudice. The violent kind."

"Ok, point taken. What else?"

"Said violent man wants you to meet him in a warehouse on the docks."

"Why?"

"To talk. And it's a pretty quiet area."

"All right, we'll be there in a couple of minutes."

Darth put the phone on the coffee table. "Captain wants to see us.

"Were they watching us?" she asked as she buttoned her shirt back up.

"Not intentionally, you can firewall can't you?

"Yeah, it's easy as."

"You want to see the captain?"

"Is going to throw me against another wall? I may have to hurt him this time."

"If he pulls something like that again, I won't leave him standing. He's really a nice guy, I swear, or at least I thought for a lot of years he was a nice guy."

"I believe you."

They shifted away.


	21. In The End

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Twenty-one

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **1529

**Please read and Review.**

They shifted down to the docks, it wasn't hard to guess which one he was in, there weren't that many empty ones that the rebels didn't frequent, and it wasn't a smart idea for a collaborator to be in a rebel hangout.

They walked in, and Ryder, in a long dark coat, was leaning against an old broken shipping crate.

"We need to have a talk," he said levelly.

"You're going to talk this time?" Darth asked, "and are you going to act like a reasonable man?"

"I am a reasonable man," Ryder said calmly.

"Oh...yeah...right," Stef mumbled. Ryder shot her a look, which she countered with a shrug.

"How about you start by telling me exactly what is going on," he said as they stood across from them.

"I don't see why we have to explain anything to you," Darth said, "you don't go questioning Niq about her relationships."

"Well to the best of my knowledge, Niq is not with a program. Human relationships, whatever their nature, need no explanation. Relationships with something not human need explanation. A reason as to why a program would want a programmer."

"Ryder, reasonable men do not do all the talking, they actually listen," Darth said.

"So you wouldn't have a problem if I was human?" Stef asked.

"I would have a serious talk if you were a recruit, just to make sure this wasn't some kind of plan."

"The way you keep implying that this may only an evil scheme to get information out him makes it seem as though you have something to hide, that you're keeping information that wasn't in your d-base."

"No, we don't, but I'm not sure that our is good enough for you."

"So even though you entire crew is under our protection, and you are all collaborators, you still don't trust us."

Ryder shook his head, "I guess deep down, I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"You disappoint me captain, it is my experience that humans are usually the ones who are much more likely to betray each other."

"Well given that most of your experience with humans is staring at them from behind your gun before you kill them..."

"Do shut up, or I will shoot you, I don't care if you are a collaborator," Stef growled with her eyes flaring. "How dare you judge me? You don't even know me and you've already passed judgement on me."

"Give me a reason to pass a different judgement."

She sat quietly for a moment, silently debating with herself as to what to say to him. "I can't Ryder, I can't give you another reason to judge a system program differently. I'm just a program and I don't think that's ever going to be good enough for you."

"Frankly, it's not."

"Then I guess I have nothing else to say," she said as she shifted away.

"Ryder, I don't understand why you're acting like this. You've never acted like this before."

"Well one of us has never been this close to one them before, I just think it's a little dangerous."

"Dangerous? For who?" Darth asked angrily.

"For everyone."

"How so?"

"It's dangerous for you in several ways. One, you really don't know her reasoning for wanting to be with you. Two, how are you going to feel when she gets tired of you and leaves? Three, if she gets angry or upset with you she can kill you without a second thought."

The Ryder's phone rang, "Galli, I'm busy," he said as he answered it.

"That I can see for myself," Galli said with a smile, "wave, you're on Galli-cam."

"Get to the point."

"I've got a hacker that needs to meet with you."

"Not today." Ryder paused and considered what his operator had just said, "what? Why would hacker want to meet with me? Is this some Zion trick?"

"No captain, trust me, this is not a Zion trick. And trust me when I say you want to meet with her. Take Darth too."

"I guess I can spare a few minutes. When, who and where?"

"Now. Unseen Spyder. River and Dale."

"Unseen Spyder?" Ryder questioned, "should I know that name?"

Darth grinned to himself, but wiped it off his face before the captain could see it. This was certainly going to open the captain's eyes.

"Come on Darth, we'll take my car." Darth nodded and followed the captain out to his car. Ryder drove stoically to the building on the corner of River and Dale. They got out and looked around for any sign of the hacker.

Ryder walked over to the door and found a note taped to it, '4th floor,' it read.

"All right," he said to himself, "let's see what this is all about."

They walked into the building and up to the forth floor, seeing as there was only one door open, they walked into it. They saw someone, clad in black leather, standing with their back turned to them, standing beside a pair of red chairs.

"Unseen Spyder?" Ryder asked.

"Unseen, just call me Unseen," she said curtly.

"You wanted to see me?"

Unseen turned to look at them and Ryder froze when he saw who she was. Darth just smirked to himself, having already guessed what was going on.

"What is the meaning of this?" Ryder demanded, "what trick are you trying to pull now?"

"This is not a trick," she said as she took the long jacket off and hung it over the side of the chair, "I just know that you don't fully understand what's going on here."

"And by dressing like a rebel you expect me to listen to you more than when we were in the warehouse?" he spat at her.

"Let her speak," Darth said, "you said you were going to be reasonable. At least do an imitation of reasonable."

"As sick as it makes me to think about it," Stef said as she looked down at the chair and remembered sitting there, honored to be in Morpheus' presence, back when she had been naïve, "I almost became a rebel. Morpheus and Trinity themselves contacted me."

"Why would they contact an...agent...oh my god," Ryder said as he stared and leant heavily against the crate.

Darth and Stef smirked at each other, "I think he finally gets it," Darth said.

"You mean to say that you were human? But how is that possible?" Ryder whispered.

"It just is possible. So you see if I said I was human, I would be lying, and I said I was a program it wouldn't be a lie, it would just be a half-truth. I am an Agent, nothing is going to change that."

"And I'm a man who made a rash decision."

"Which decision cap?" Darth asked.

"To leave Zion."

Darth just stared at him, "you regret being free of the war? You regret safety? What exactly about this situation do you regret?"

"It's not like that," Ryder explained, "more of a feeling I get in the middle of the night, a feeling every turncoat must feel. It's all right for you young ones, you, Niq and Cray, but we're having more of a problem letting go. But it's ok," he said with a smile, "I made this decision for you. That's why people fight wars, we fight so that the future generations get the world to live in."

Stef rolled her eyes, "is there something about this room that makes people talk in speeches?"

"We fight so that you get to make your own decisions, whatever they might be."

"Ryder...are you saying?" Darth started.

"No, I'm not. I said you get to make your own decisions, it doesn't mean I like or accept them, but for the moment I'm just going to but out of it. Just keep this out of my face and it'll be ok for the moment."

The captain of the Exodus turned and walked away.

"That," Darth explained, "is Captain-Ryder-speak for 'I have to sit in my cabin for four days so I can understand what's going on in the world.' The last time he acted weird, no one but Pandora saw him for a week."

"Your captain is a strange man."

"Yes, he can be."

"I know how long it can take to adjust. Even now there are times when I don't know who or what I am. Program or human. I think I've finally fully accepted that I'm both at once." Then she noticed that he was staring at her, "you like what you see?" she asked him coyly.

"The other night I tried to imagine what you would look like as a rebel, trust me, this is much better than what I saw."

She required the leather outfit to change back to her suit, "Unseen the rebel is just an image, this is the reality."

Darth reached out and coiled her tie around his finger, pulling her closer and closer, "I know," he said with a smile as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. "So where were we?"

She smiled coyly as she shifted them away, "I'm sure we'll figure it out."


	22. Memories

**Title:** Choices and Chances: Chapter Twenty-two

**Author:** Stormhawk

**Chapter Word Count: **2113

C&C finishes with this chapter! YAYNESS! And for those who don't know, it IS LONGER THAN FOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C&C final word count: 34768

FOS: 33587

As for what I'm doing next: A short afterward to this, probably just a couple of thousand words, then maybe two chaps of SMU and then the novel. Ok?

**Please read and Review.**

Smith walked down an empty back street, and looked up at the back of Ivy's apartment. It was clear by the furniture that it was occupied, he somewhat wished that it wasn't. If it had been empty, he could have gone up there, and looked for something to remind him of the days when she was still alive. Any small reminder of their time together, something besides his memories.

Their first date had been in her apartment, she had insisted on cooking him dinner, and afterward she had taught him how to dance. The night had been strangely surreal, but a memory he held deep in his heart. His first date, with the first woman he had ever loved.

Perhaps, the only woman he would ever love like that.

"I knew you would be here," a voice said.

He spun and drew his gun, and aimed it at the shapeshifter, Kyla. "Wait, please wait!" she pleaded as she backed away from him.

"Why should I?"

"Because somewhere between downloading your girlfriend's memories and spending time with you, I think I fell in love with you."

"You're lying and I don't intend on putting up with anymore of your lies."

"No, please, listen to me..."

Smith pulled out his gun and pointed it toward her. "Thanks to you exiles, I have lost the woman I love twice. I am going to make every effort to exterminate you people once and for all."

"I have all of her memories, I remember how much she loved you and how much you loved her. I remember that the last thing she ever thought about was you."

"Do you want to know the difference between you and my Ivy?" The exile nodded.

"The difference is," Smith said as he pulled the trigger and Kyla fell to the ground, "or rather the point is that she is dead and you are a false copy of her. You defiled her memories in an effort to strike back at the system." He stared down at the body of the shapeshifter, and walked away.

Unknown to him, he was followed.

He walked, rather than shifted, to the graveyard where Ivy was buried. Unlike a lot of recruits who died who had very little close family, Ivy's parents had been around so the Agency had allowed them to deal with the...arrangements.

Recruits who died and had no close family where buried in a private graveyard with simple headstones and their name put in the obituaries. As simple as these arrangements might seem, they were in case anyone ever came looking for them. And despite their best efforts to train their recruits, the graveyard grew larger every year.

Rebel bodies, on the other hand, were simply incinerated.

He had gone to Ivy's funeral, standing at a great distance, but his enhanced senses had made it easy for him to hear and see everything, making it seem as though he was there.

Out of a need not to alarm the family, they had repaired the body first, leaving only a small wound. The cover story that was she had been a government secretary and a madman had broken into the building and killed several of the employees. With the crime rate, this explanation was easy to accept.

The graveyard was silent, a few gray clouds hung about in the air, an echo of his gloomy mood. There was no one else about, he alone seemed to be grieving today.

And then, suddenly, he wasn't alone anymore.

A rugged exile, taller than he, landed beside him. Smith pulled out his gun but the man shook his head calmly. "I just want to talk."

"Why?"

'Ivy."

"Are you pathetic traitors fixated on me? Why can't you leave her alone? You took her from me, but you won't leave her be."

"I'm not from Merv. I was in the...bowels of hell I think she called it. I was his prisoner, so I hate him as much as you do." He looked down at the agent, "and besides, no one would believe me if I said I saw Agent Smith grieving for a human."

Smith pointed his gun up at the exile's head, but the exile just laughed. "I'm pretty tough, you'd have to have a bigger caliber to get rid of me with one shot, and trust me, you won't land more than one shot on me, I'm fast as well." The were-bear reached into his coat and pulled out an old and faded envelope. "This should buy me a head start."

Smith snatched it out of his hand, "what is it?"

"Ivy was in hell, a long time ago she was anyway. She was so frail when she got there that we all treated her like she was a kid. We looked after her as best as we could but she wouldn't talk to us. After about a week or so she finally started talking. We didn't believe her at first when she said she was human, and had been your girl, but after a few months it really didn't matter anymore. She wrote this and asked me to hold onto it. It's for you, and I swear I never opened it."

"Why should I believe you? What proof do I have that this isn't another one of his tricks?"

The were-bear stared at him for a second, and then patted down all the pockets of his coat, looking for something. "Give me a minute," he said and the agent gave him a long-suffering look but the gun never wavered.

"Ah finally," Joshua said and pulled out a necklace with a pendant made out of a tie clip. "She said to give this to you."

"And you just agreed to pass these things onto me? An agent?"

'Well, I was going to mail them to you, but I caught wind of your scent so i decided to deliver them to you, like I promised."

Smith lowered his gun - but didn't put it away - "how did she die?'

"It was during one of their parties."

"Parties?"

"Most of the time they come in small groups, cause hell is a playground, a special treat for Merv's guys, but sometimes they have parties, where whole groups of them come at once. It's those times where we lose lots of people. The number of us stays roughly the same though, the cells of the chateaux are mainly just for atmosphere and for the ones he hasn't finished with yet."

"So how have you survived so long?"

"I'm a werebear, I'm tough, takes more than a bullet or two to down me, all of us have sustained injuries though."

"How long ago did she die?"

"Eight years, a party in November if my time-sense didn't completely abandon me. We all wanted to get rid of Merv's shapeshifter but he threatened to delete the whole place if we went near her, so that's why we kept to the shadows when you were there."

"How. Did. She. Die?"

"I know you loved her, but this isn't easy for me to remember either. I knew her for two years, she was like my little sister or something."

"Tell me or I'll take you apart at the seams."

"I thought she was right behind me, I really did. But then this vamp came out of nowhere, like one of the ghosts man, I'm serious. He phased right out of the wall, black phase, we couldn't even see him. She didn't have a chance."

"Do you know which vampire it was?"

"Vlad, it was Vlad. You don't even have to know him to know it was him."

"Yes, I've heard of him."

"Like the twins, he's one of Merv's choice weapons, but unlike the albinos, Vlad strikes from the darkness." Joshua shrugged, "so are you going to try and kill me now?"

"If I ever see you again, I will kill you. But for today, I will let you live."

"I guess I have to be glad of that," he said as he leapt away, landing in the tress at the side of the graveyard.

Smith wrapped the necklace around his fingers and watched the dull light reflect off his tie clip. She'd taken it off him about a month before she had...

They had only been together for three months, but it was three months he would never forget, even if he didn't think about it that often. He stared down at the necklace, she had taken the tie clip off him one night, just before she had gone to bed.

He hadn't understood it, thinking that it was one of her games or jokes, but the next day he had seen her wearing it as a necklace. She had never taken it off, she said it was like having him with her all the time. She even wore it when she had her suit on, tucked under her white shirt.

It had been many decades since he had been detached and impartial toward humans, but Ivy had shown him a side of humanity that he had never seen before. A side that they usually only showed to other humans, but she had deemed him special enough to show that side to him.

Before that, the most human thing he had done was go to a movie.

_The door to his office flung open and Carol took a step in, then a sheepish look crossed her face and she knocked on the open door. _

"_Yes recruit?"_

"_If you don't stop calling me that or 'Miss Whitman' I am going to convert."_

"_Yes...Carol?"_

_She threw a newspaper down in front of him with an ad circled. "I was going to be in that movie." _

_A puzzled look grew on his face, "oh...I don't quite understand." _

"_If not for this stupid war, that would be me running from the Ultimate Hamster of Doom."_

"_Ultimate Hamster of Doom?"_

"_You know these B-grade sci-fi movies, the pick an animal at random and say it has been affected by radiation or add 'from space' after it. This time it was a hamster." _

"..._a hamster?"_

"_There were going to use a sheep, but a hamster is sooo much cuter so therefore more monstrous after the radiation hits it."_

"_Carol, should I be questioning your sanity?"_

"_Geez Smith, it's just a movie, you know."_

"_Actually, I don't."_

"_You've never seen a movie?"_

"_Why would I have?"_

"_Because they're fun," she smiled, "tell you what, there's a session about to start, let's go."_

"_Now?"_

"_Why wait?"_

"_Carol, I don't think I should..."_

"..._say no when a lady offers to pay for the movie. This doesn't happen a lot Smith, so be glad of it."_

"_Does it take a long time?"_

"_About an hour and a half, live a little Smith. Get a life."_

"_All right, but just this once." _

Smith knelt down and kissed the headstone. Then he sat down with his back up against it. Carefully he opened the yellowed letter and began to read the last communication he would ever receive from her.

But to his surprise, most of it was written in code, there was only one instruction written on the first page, written in her neat hand, 'program this into yourself.'

Curious, he opened up his program and began to input the code. At the end of the last page of code, after he had put in the last sequence, he was no longer sitting in a graveyard, he was standing in his office.

And Ivy, wearing the suit he had issued her himself, was standing before him with a smile on her face. He went to speak but she put a finger to his lips, "don't ask me any questions, because I can't answer them. And don't be fooled, this isn't real, this is my goodbye to you."

She gently led him by the arm and sat him down in his chair, "rather than a long-winded letter, I just wanted to say a simple goodbye."

Smith could feel the tears welling up in his eyes.

"It took me a long time to think of a perfect way to say goodbye, and I'm just praying that you get to see this." She paused and smiled at him, "I thought our last kiss should be our first. Goodbye Smith, and remember, I did love you."

Ivy leant down and kissed him.

He kissed her back and wrapped his arms around her thin body, wanting the moment to last forever. He opened his eyes and looked at her once more before she faded away and he was once again in the graveyard, surrounded by nothing but his memories.


	23. Just a scene

C&C: Extra Chapter

Ok…yes I know C&C was finished off ages ago, but this little extra scene should have actually gone in and been the second last chapter, or tacked on to the second last chapter. In either case, it comes straight after:

0101

Darth reached out and coiled her tie around his finger, pulling her closer and closer, "I know," he said with a smile as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. "So where were we?"

She smiled coyly as she shifted them away, "I'm sure we'll figure it out."

1010

And no, this isn't just fluff, the dialogue is important (somewhat)…

01010001

"Wait," Stef said as she pulled back from Darth's embrace.

He looked at her, "we don't have to do this…"

"No," she said as she put a finger to his lips, "I want to, I just want to tell you something first." She took a breath, "I just wanted to tell you that the reason this hasn't happened before was because I was afraid."

"Of me?" he asked quietly. "You know I'd never hurt you."

She shook her head, "no, not of you, of me."

"I don't understand."

"I was afraid that I couldn't do this. I know I look human, and have the right lumpy bits, but I was afraid I wasn't human enough. It's not like system programs are supposed to go out and do stuff like this, I know exiles can, but exiles work in a completely different way to system programs. I was afraid of what would happen between us because of what couldn't happen between us."

"And now?"

"I'm rather certain that it's possible, but it's something else as well."

"What?"

"I love you more than anything, and I never want to be apart from you again. I am never again going to base a decision on what might be instead of what is."

"I don't think I have decent response to that."

"You don't need one," she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

He kissed her deeply, and looked down at her. Gently, he pulled her tie away and she shrugged her jacket off, and he started on her buttons. He undid each one and then pulled her shirt from out of her waistband and it let fall to the floor.

"Bedroom," she whispered as she pulled his shirt off.

"Where is it?" he asked as he pressed his chest to hers and slid his hands up her back, making her shiver.

"Follow me," she said as she put her hands on his waist, walking backward and pulling him along to her bedroom. As soon as they were in, Darth lifted one of his hands away from her and slammed the door shut.

010101

The sun had faded and died, and the stars were wheeling across the sky.

Stef was reclined up against Darth's chest, and was holding his hands around her middle.

"Darth?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Do we ever have to leave here?"

"No."

"Good," she said with a grin as she turned to face him.

He lifted a hand to her chin and pulled her gently toward him for a deep kiss, "we can't eve leave here," he said as he ran a finger up and down her spine, "because I am never letting you go."

"Good," she said with a seductive grin as they kissed again.


End file.
